Lost to the streets
When her cousin, a bright kid known for his gleaming smile, was released from prison as a young man, Danielle Allen helped him get his first driver’s license. She took him to register for college courses. She scoured ads to find his first job and first apartment.
A political theorist at Harvard University, Allen had the flexibility and financial means to build a sturdy bridge for the precarious transition from prisoner to freed man.
But there was really nothing she could do to save her baby “cuz,” because he was already gone. Allen’s memoir, “Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A.,” is a doleful and stirring narrative of how Michael Allen Alexander’s magnetic smile slowly dimmed until he was found shot to death in the passenger seat of a car in Los Angeles.
Allen’s heartbreak gives way to a well-researched expedition. Why did this happen to a young black man from a loving family? Through memory, letters Michael wrote from prison and interviews with family members, Allen retraces his steps, filling in the parts of his life he kept hidden behind his grin.
Michael was arrested for attempted carjacking at age 15 and sentenced to 12 years and eight months. He was released at 26. He was dead three years later.
“Cuz” is more than Michael’s story. It’s the story of Los Angeles in the late 1980s and early ’90s, a city where black and brown girls and boys engulfed by the crack epidemic and the rise of street gangs had no guardian angels. It’s a story about the so-called war on drugs and how, instead of treating communities ravaged by crack and heroin, the government responded by locking up millions of people.
In “Cuz,” Michael is the face of mass incarceration — and an example of California’s callous judicial system.
“The target of Michael’s sentence,” Allen writes, “was not Michael, a fifteen-year-old boy with a bright mind and a mild proclivity ... for theft, but the 2,663 carjackings that occurred in Los Angeles between January and August of 1993.”
In 1994, California passed the “three strikes” law, which significantly increased the punishment for felony convictions. The law was supposed to be a deterrence for repeat offenders. But what about a boy who racked up four strikes — two felonies from the attempted carjacking and two more from alleged robberies — in one week? It began the march toward the end of his life.
In 1995, California lowered the age at which juveniles could be tried as adults from 16 to 14, Allen notes. Michael was arrested on Sept. 17, 1995. Still, he was ordered to serve his time in the California Youth Authority, the juvenile prison. Instead, he was shipped to an adult prison when he turned 17.
In all, Michael served time in 11 prisons. In one, he began the romance that led to his death.
But there were bright spots in Michael’s life.
“In fighting fires, Michael found freedom,” Allen writes.
In 2003, he was on the firefighting prison crews that wrangled fires in Reche Canyon. Michael wrote his cousin a spellbinding account of what it felt like to trek through rough terrain as his eyes burned, and the exhilaration he got from fighting on as he struggled to breathe. The prisoners were paid $1 a day. Nevertheless, it gave Michael’s life a sense of purpose, at least for a year.
“I’m convinced that Michael became the man he believed he could be when he was on the line, the lead shovel, slowing down a fire’s path,” Allen writes. “The heat and screaming crackle of fire brought focus, too, to his academic efforts . ... Michael found the secret to his well-being: fire, books, and love. He was one of the lucky ones. Not yet among the millions lost, he had, if fleetingly, found himself.”