Dear Editor:

My name is Mr. Russell Lamar Rose Jr. I am an African American man who is currently incarcerated at Waupun Correctional Institution here in the state of Wisconsin.

A friend of mine who lives in Canton, NY shared the “North Country This Week” newspaper article with me about the powerful (yet COVID-19) risky) Black Lives Matters protests held in Potsdam recently.

I would like to thank Andy Gardner for presenting this thought-provoking story to your readership.

It is extremely important for me to share how your very small communities acts of compassion has reached all the way into the prison. I’m currently in, and changed lives for the better in regards to healing the pain of racism.

My next-door-neighbor is a self avowed Neo-Nazi who usually spends five hours of each day to denigrate the Black Diaspora with vile hate speech shouted through his cell door. I’m the only person around him who engages him in intellectual conversation regarding his racist views.

Today on July 15^th at 2 a.m. he started into his racist tirade. He mentioned that there are no Caucasian communities in rural America who gives a damn about Black Lives being taken by police violence while he held his long monologue. He also shouted out a challenge to anyone listening, saying that if anyone could produce proof that George Floyd’s murder had any effect on White people who don’t live in major cities where Blacks were marching, he would shut up his racist verbal abuse for 1 calendar month.

Well, I just so happened to pull out Vol. 36, No. 42 of the “North Country This Week” free newspaper and shared Mr. Gardner’s article with him. I also read it out loud for all to hear how 1,000 people in a predominantly Caucasian community stood up to race violence in Potsdam.

After two hours of attempting to back peddle on his word about the 30-day hate speech hiatus, my next door neighbor finally gave in and kept his word.

What happened once he no longer had racist rhetoric to hide behind was an open and honest conversation between he and I about how Racism is a form of mental slavery stemming from very irrational fears. Long gone are the “glory days” of the Confederacy and the 3^rd Reich of WWII. Since both of these types of mind-sets that governed social orders in the past, were failures and ultimately abolished, trying to keep these paradigms alive only for nostalgia’s sake in the wake of socially progressive change, is mental slavery. And the irrational fear that, if racism isn’t kept in use the Caucasian people of the world will slowly cease to exists has no basis in reality.

After reading this Potsdam protest article, my neighbor decided to renounce his membership as a Neo-Nazi. He has now joined our “Love Over Hate” discussions that I’ve been hosting amongst my fellow inmates since the death of Mr. Floyd. I need your readers to know that fear leads to anger; and anger leads to hate, which causes suffering. As human beings, all that will save us from ourselves is love and understanding.

Please publish my story in its entirety. Because the actions of your community, I have a new friend who spent 30 years hating what he did not understand.

Thank you,

Russell Rose