By Chris Pollock
The Morning Call
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — When Lorenzo Steele Jr. talks about life in prison, sometimes his pictures tell the story even better than he can.
“They cut this guy so deep he could stick his tongue through his cheek,” Steele said, showing a slide of a teen gashed from scalp to jawbone.
The picture was one in a series taken by Steele during his time as a corrections officer on Rikers Island in New York City from 1987 to 1999. On Saturday, he was the first speaker to an audience of about 25 youngsters ages 6 to 18 taking part in the Tribute to a King Workshop sponsored by the Allentown chapter of the NAACP. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter traditionally holds a program the weekend before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, said chapter President Dan Bosket.
His voice echoing off the brick walls of the meeting room in St. James African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church at 410 Union St., Steele portrayed prison life as a hard, violent struggle to survive. It has no relation, he said, to the glamorized image of prison he often sees in rap videos and video games.
He showed pictures of the packaging of games with names such as “25 to Life,” and a movie poster for the film “Get Rich or Die Tryin’,” which shows a man with a gun stuck in his belt. The film starred rapper 50 Cent, and Steele’s criticism of performers who trade in prison imagery was withering.
“The first thing they [rappers] do when they get their millions is they leave the ghetto,” he said. “You see them on [the television show] “MTV Cribs.’ Nobody will tell you the real deal about what happens in jail. These guys are paid actors.”
Steele’s appearance was sponsored by a federal grant via the 222 Corridor Anti-Gang Initiative. He made a point to mention there is only one reward for gang membership, and it is more jail time.
“You stand in front of the judge, all your gang buddies aren’t coming to court with you,” he said. The real reason gangs perpetuate themselves, he said, is profit for the few on top.
“The OGs [gangsters] out here, they’re multiple felons, they can’t work,” he said. “So they need you to sell your bodies, to sell drugs to get [them] money.”
Although Steele’s presentation was intense at times, Bosket said it was something young people especially needed to see.
“That’s when you have an opportunity to shape their thoughts and help them formulate what their longer-term goals are going to be,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that go unsaid in the environment that youth exist in, in terms of their dress, the music they listen to and the friends they have.”
Steele also emphasized the importance of the right friends helping to keep a child on the right path. He said if the police find drugs or a gun in a car, in the eyes of the law it belongs to everyone in the car, thus sending otherwise-innocent children to jail.
The raw truth about prison and the culture surrounding it did seem to open some eyes.
“I knew it was crazy, but I didn’t know it was like that,” said Olivia Tomlinson, 14, of Allentown. She said she’s already separating herself from some of her friends who would rather skip school.
“I’m in honors classes,” she said. “They had the chance to do that, but they’re not achieving anything.”
Copyright 2008 Morning Call