Time Is for Criminals

In your life, your crime is to steal time. It cannot be bought. It can only be stolen.

Ever since you were born, they have been commanding you that you must submit to the time of others, others that are not even real, like the school institutions or the factory or the computer desk for work. Time as punishment coincides with the rise of capitalism.

“How dare anyone try to take time for themselves! We must punish the criminals with time—in order to make everyone fear time.”

They have made you believe that they own time and that you, like a good little capitalist, can become happy by selling and then buying your time. By accepting their mathematical formula regarding time, you sell your soul not just for eight hours a day but for forever.

You cannot convince the stupid world to any other way; you cannot negotiate or compromise or work hard for your own autonomy—for even hard work is a lie that they invented. Time does not care whether you work or not.

Existence is existence.

Therefore, if this is the way of the world, you must steal time. There is no justice: you live, and you die. All that you can have for yourself and for others is time, and you must take it.

Only time can teach you the patience and openness to reach anything called happiness. Of course, it takes a lot of suffering to realize this:  

Time is for criminals.

Delivering The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Barrio Bushido, and Pura Neta books for prisoners at the San Francisco County Jail
SFM N Jeff and vatos locos doing time at Susanville, circa 1988.

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