Posts filed under ‘7 Keys’
7 Keys “To Riot, Or Not To Riot”
Jamaal was a socialist’s profiling dream. He was the reason liberalists went into government. He confirmed and justified their stance on the Human Rights Act. He epitomised the phrase ‘broken society’. Of course Jamaal was involved in the London riots. Angry, disenchanted, disengaged with all around him.
If you were to read his welfare notes, you would cry, just as many social workers have. Beaten regularly by his drunken father. Deprived of love. Used as a place to stub out burning cigarettes – his back, soles of his feet, the chubby palms of his baby hands. Bones broken. Made to fight his twin brother by his sadistic Dad until one had hurt the other. The sorry list
goes on.
He was seldom at school after the age of eight. Could barely write, but he could text and he could message. He knew the streets of London, especially Croydon which he called his turf.
Using his Blackberry he co-ordinated the beginnings of the Croydon riots. But unlike some of the leaders, he wasn’t standing back, Jamaal was in amongst it. Anger engulfing his body. Adrenaline and Ketamine pumping through his veins. He was like a wild animal let loose. Years of abuse spilling out. Smashing cars; charging at shop windows. Hatred burning inside him. Breaking down a middle-aged woman’s front door; stealing her handbag. Hitting her dog with his baseball bat. The dog dying and the woman changed forever in that moment. Setting light to a shop that had taken the owner years to build up; all gone in minutes. Jamaal sucked in every last drop of his creation. He was flying. Years of torture. He was hitting back. At the government for not stepping in when they should have, at all the fucking smug people that had jobs and their nice little families, for every fucking person on this planet for leaving him to rot in that hell hole. For the years he was never heard. Now they’re fucking hearing me, he thought laughing.
In court his barrister pleaded his case, going for the sympathy vote he laid before the court Jamaal’s past. ‘With an upbringing like that, what do you expect.’ His barrister said, summing up.
A week later a riot officer was being awarded for his bravery during the Croydon riots. Amongst other things PC Bailey had tackled and disarmed a rioter who was waving around a 12” machete. Daniel Bailey didn’t think he was particularly brave, he was just doing his job, his duty. This was his city and he loved it.
PC Daniel Bailey had done well for himself, or so many said. He is a youth worker’s dream. He is why community workers do the work they do and why community projects and charities exist. Turned his life around; against all the bitter odds, one local newspaper said as they covered his successful graduation at the Police Training Academy.
You see, PC Daniel Bailey is Jamaal’s twin brother. I know what you’re thinking, was Daniel taken away and raised in a different environment? No. Daniel also was beaten, abused and broken. Daniel and his brother went through the same disgusting upbringing their parents inflicted on them together, side by side. The difference is the meaning they gave to this
terrible start in life and how they decided it would define them.
The local newspaper who covered Daniel’s graduation into the Police Force asked how he had ended up achieving so much with such a disadvantaged background. Daniel replied, ‘With an upbringing like that, what do you expect.’
Copyright Estelle Maria Love 2011
NB. Names, characters, places, events and organisations in this book are fictitious, or are a product of the author’s imagination and any similarities are entirely coincidental.
‘7 Keys to Heaven-on-Earth’ by Estelle Maria Love
