“The State of Texas is preparing to execute a man who spends his days clinging to crayons. The question is whether anyone has adequately examined what that tells us about his present competence to die.”

I carried crayons everywhere.

On July 7, 2016, I stood at the front of a march I’d organized through downtown Dallas, Texas. We had gathered to grieve Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, two black men who had been killed by police brutality in the span of only a few days. Thousands of people came out that night. I had raised my voice and passionately demanded that they show up in those streets. The night was peaceful. Officers repeatedly offered marchers assurances about their commitment to stop police brutality. Some officers even stopped to pose for pictures with protesters. Children rode on their parents’ shoulders. Drums and chants filled the air. For a few blocks, it felt like the entire city was praying with one voice for a lasting victory for love and justice.

Then, shots rang out.

The sound bounced off the buildings so hard nobody knew where death was coming from. People screamed. People ran. People fell to the pavement and covered their children with their bodies. I grabbed my stomach, thinking that I had been shot. I watched a war zone explode right before my eyes. Before morning, five police officers were dead, and dozens of people were in hospitals recovering from injuries. And I am the one who called all of those people into the streets.

In the weeks to come, my mind broke. I don’t say that lightly. I say it because it’s the truest way I know how to describe it. Something in me shattered that night. I spent the months that followed trying to put all of the pieces back together with wax and paper.

I remember the waiting room at the psychiatrist’s office. I couldn’t read the magazines. I couldn’t follow the television bolted to the wall. I couldn’t hold a thought long enough to finish it. The shots just kept coming back over and over. The screams bounced around my skull. My mind was trapped in a city on fire. There was nothing to hold on to.

Except crayons and paper.

I could concentrate on the colors. Nothing else. A grown man, a father, a husband, a priest, a theologian...hunched over a coloring book in a psychiatric waiting room...pressing a crayon into the page like it was the last solid thing on earth on earth that I could grab. Because it was. Blue stayed blue. Green stayed green. The lines held. When nothing in my head would hold together, the lines held.

So I colored furiously. In the waiting room. In church pews. In my car. At my own kitchen table while my children ate breakfast. People stared. I didn’t care. I was not coloring for fun. I was coloring to stay alive. Each page I finished was proof that I was alive. Every stroke was a heartbeat I could see.

Jamaal Howard colors too.

In a cell in Texas, Jamaal waits to be murdered with crayons in his hands. He colors the way I colored...furiously...desperately...trying to stay inside himself while the world outside promises to kill him on October 7.

But nobody is giving Jamaal grace. Nobody is giving him time. The State of Texas looks at a man clinging to crayons and calls him competent enough to execute. Nobody seems willing to take a second to stop and see what is going on in his brain.

I know what those crayons are. They are not a hobby. They are not a distraction. They are a drowning man’s grip on something solid. I held that same grip. In that waiting room...I was Jamaal. The only difference between us is that when I broke...my world let me color my way back in. When Jamaal broke...the world silenced him and scheduled his death.

Under Texas law, a competency hearing must be held more than 20 days before an execution. That makes September 17 the deadline. Judge Steven Thomas can order that hearing. He just has to be moved to do it. So we are sending him coloring books. We are asking people to help Judge Thomas understand the level of horror it would be to execute someone who is clinging to crayons to survive already. We are not telling him what to do. We are sending him blank coloring books to encourage him to hold a hearing. In the coming weeks, we will be utilizing the media and other forms of communication to make sure that the meaning of these coloring books are clear.

After my mind broke, I survived because someone let me hold a crayon instead of a casket.

Jamaal deserves the same.

Send coloring books to: Judge Steven Thomas 356th District Court Hardin County Courthouse 300 West Monroe Street Kountze, TX 77625 +Coloring books can very easily be bought from a host of online retailers and sent directly to Judge Thomas.