Scattered Images in My Mind Perception is everything

RIGHT UNTIL PROVED WRONG

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We touch the fragile wings of a butterfly even if we know it may never fly again...because we can

We laugh on our children's innocence and urge them to grow up fast in our modern cynical world where everything is for sale...because we can

We teach our children that shopping is the best passtime, to shop even if they do not need anything...because we can

We love our meat and eat it and eat it, even if the meat production is one of the biggest polluters of our environment and it is not good for our health...because we can

We build faster and higher and higher...because we can

We grow roses on a desert floor and use all our water resources for it....because we can

We live and work all day long in superficial environments with optimal lightening and airconditioning forgeting about the world outside...because we can

We love our shops with artificial lights and airconditioning and spend there our money...because we can

After our stressful days we love to spend our evening in a cinema or theatre and forget about the sorrows of our planet...because we can

We spend our holiday in exclusive hotels above all the poverty and dirt...because we can

We take photos of the native inhabitants of our holiday destination and then forget about them...because we can

We close our eyes outside our comfort zone where we can see...

our natural environment destroyed,

vandalized

and our water polluted in the name of progress and civilization ...because we can

We hide in the comfort of our house full of souvenirs we bought on our travels all around the world...because we can

In comfort of our home, among our collected treasures we dream about free love, justice and peace...because we can

We abandon our pets if we are fed up with them...because we can

Our grown up children battle with depression and lack of vision for future so we pay them overseas holiday...because we can

They go and try to save the world, they go to save whales from Japanese fishermen...because they can

We fly to Europe to see some culture and so shopping...because we can

We come back home to celebrate our forebearers who invaded this country and took it from Aboriginals

We go fishing because we like it although fish stock is depleted

and catch some fish, although we don't use it...because we can

We keep driving on the beach with our heavy fourwheeldrive although we pollute water and kill sand creatures...because we can

We keep planting new orchards

and establishing new farms although there is no more water left

and all used and reused farming land is slowly lost to salinity.

We go and relax on the beach and forget all about it....because we can

We avoid a dead fish suffocated in a floating plastic bag...because we can

We pat a wildlife manta ray even if it can endanger her life...because we can

We feed a wildlife kangaroo even if it means it gets used to it and will not be able to feed itself...because we can

We collect, kill and eat everything alive around us if we want new delicacy to enrich our palate...because we can

Then we see a bird on a dry tree and wonder why he is there not realising that...

we occupy all the living space and he has nowhere else to go...

We just hide in the anonymity of our city passing the time...

We don't like to see our poor neighbourhood...so we avoid to look that way.

We make our mark somewhere in our city so we are not forgotten

We forget everything partying and enjoying life...because we can

Long lost Aboriginals look at us from the old photos remembering their own traditional way of life but we don't meet their eyes...our perception is different, we know that they are wrong and WE ARE RIGHT...are we?

Our Perception is Everything

‘GUILTY UNTIL PROVED INNOCENT’;

WE SAY.

OUR PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING;

IF WE DON’T WANT TO BE GUITLY;

WE NEED TO CHANGE.

One of the most infamous 
lawyers of the twentieth century

William Kunstler
who fought for civil rights
with Martin Luther King
and represented
the famed ‘Chicago 8’ activists
was the most loved
middle-class family man
and celebrated radical activist

until…

he started to defend 
a black teenager,
who was accused
of rape and killing
of an innocent white girl.

Hatred from the wider community
haunted the poor black teenager
he was guilty until prove innocent
and there was still not enough evidence…

He was not convicted yet,
shot in the back of the head
in the darkness of his shabby room
and the respected community wishes
have been satisfied.

William Kunstler
defender of the accused rapist
was suddenly 
the most hated 
lawyer in America
looked down upon
even by his own family.

Twenty years have past
until the truth came out
an successful white American politician
was responsible for the crime.
He said:
“ I was safe because no one would believe 
that I had committed that crime.”

WHY?

There is a possibility
that a very high percentage 
of American prisoners
did not commit the crimes
for which they were convicted
or even executed 
in our recent times.

Barry Scheck
uses DNA evidence
to free hundreds 
of the falsely convicted prisoners.
His legal foundation
gets thousands of letters a year
from inmates who say
they are innocent.
Some can barely write,
many are desperate:
“ I am not the man
that did this Rape,”
writes one of them:
“ All I want is to go Home.”

A potentially wrongful conviction
is a doubt that not even death can erase.
You can’t bring the wrongly executed prisoner back.

Maybe that is the reason
Barry Scheck’s work
remains hugely controversial 
with prosecutors and public alike.
A crusader for truth
no one wants to know.

WHY?

Corruption and misconducts
by policemen and prosecutors
often play a role
in wrongful convictions.

Our own prejudice and misconceptions
are so easy to manipulate,
we want to believe
that a black man, a homeless, a nobody
with no one to defend him/her,
committed a crime.
Guilty until proved innocent,
is our verdict.
Justice has been done.

And while I am writing these lines,
in one of the American infamous jails,
an old man waits on death row
waiting for his son to visit him
for the last time…

It was December 2003
in the Australian Supreme Court,
where three judges had just dismissed
the Andrew Mallard’s appeal
from 1994
for wilful murder.
He was to remain in prison for the rest
of his life.

His sister and his mother,
kind, honest, law-abiding people
with great loyalty and quiet strength
could not find anyone
among lawyers, policemen and the general public,
who would believe in his innocence,
except one,
a nine months pregnant and sobbing loudly
a young journalist,
who saw the evidence mounted
that an innocent man was behind bars and no one cares.

With her newborn baby in her arms,
she received a Congratulation card from his prison,
and a letter:
“ You were my first spark of hope
that is now a billowing flame:
you have been my life raft, 
I would have drowned.
I’m tired.
Please won’t somebody let me rest?”

As most Australians know,
Andrew was released in early 2006
after unanimous High Court decision
and another man, 
convicted killer
is now believed by police 
to have commited the crime.

A Corruption and Crime Commission
has also found
that misconduct by two senior policemen and a prosecutor
played role in his wrongful conviction.
He has receive three millions in compensation
for his life wasted in jail,
but this is not enough in Andrew’s eye.
Justice would only be served
by those responsible for his conviction
facing what he faced:
prosecution and jail.

It would never happen,
Andrew knows it as well.
I saw him once,
Sitting at a South Perth coffee shop,
watching normal people going by,
a broken man with early grey hair,
his wrinkled eyes shining with great inner strength,
he survived.

And while I am writing these lines,
in one of the American infamous jails,
an old man waits on death row
waiting for his son to visit him
for the last time…

His son, now 49,
spent most of his life
as a victim.
When he was 6,
he saw his Mother
die,
in the hands of her violent boyfriend.
When he was a young man,
he was robbed and shot,
left on a street to die.
So when he found out,
that his father,
whom he hadn’t known as a child,
was on death row,
guilty of murder,
he went there
full of hate and resentment.

He would bring his father money 
for the commissary,
and his father would give him ink portraits 
of Plain Indians and buffalo he had drawn.
He asked his father directly if he had killed the man.
His father told him no,
he was a thief but not a murderer.
He believed him, but it was all too late.

He watched his father suffer
in unsuccessful death penalty procedure
before it was postponed for another time.
Finally he watched his father die.
When he questioned his father’s innocence 
with a prison guide,
he just shrugged his shoulders:
“ It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Does it not?
I ask,
he asked himself,
49 old victim of our times,
a law abiding citizen until now,
he left the prison,
lonely, lost and resentful,
with no trust in justice any more,
ready to follow in his father’s footsteps
and commit his first crime.
WHY?

‘GUILTY UNTIL PROVE INNOCENT’;

WE SAY.

OUR PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING;

IF WE DON’T WANT TO BE GUITLY;

WE NEED TO CHANGE.

INNOCENT UNTIL PROVED GUILTY;

IS THE ONLY WAY…

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