Who we aspire to be

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 2014.

 

            They beheaded him. It made “Breaking News” like all the others before him. Was he a journalist, an aid worker, or just a guy who saw abject suffering and it gnawed at him until he decided to do something, to witness what horrors man continues to inflict on his fellow man and to say, “At least with me, no more.” They cut his head off all the while filming the entire brutal, ugly incident. They filmed and they scoffed.

            And we react with revulsion at the barbarism and inhumanity, at the lack of moral clarity in the act and the words. We cry out for “justice,” yet it isn’t justice we seek, its vengeance. We demand retribution all the while ignoring the blood that is on our own hands.

            The issue, we are told this week, is whether “enhanced interrogation techniques are effective in stopping terrorism.” The issue, we are told, is given the nature of our enemy, what is acceptable in a “war unique in the annals of history.” I respectfully disagree. The real question is: does our conduct in war – and peace – keep with the ideals of this country? Or, as Senator John McCain so eloquently put it, “Does this represent who we were, who we are, and who we aspire to be?”

            I speak of the recently released report on CIA activities during the days following 9/11. In truth, I speak beyond that to the foundational notion that exceptional nations act exceptionally. Americans understand in their gut that the reason government must always vest “in the people” is because governments – like all human – failed creatures that we are – institutions are capable of evil. As a believer in the redemptive power of God’s grace. I understand all too well that we are all fallen, we are all sinful, we are all capable of doing the “wrong” thing at any given time. But, we are called to see, as President Lincoln, described it, “the better angels” in ourselves. When we justify the use of torture in the name of a “war” against anyone, we are no more moral, no less evil, than those who attack us.

            Fear causes us to do extraordinary things. I remember those first weeks after 9/11 when we weren’t sure if more attacks were coming, when we weren’t sure even how many were dead. There were rumors attacks; anthrax scares. And my immediate reaction was one of bloodlust. “Kill them all,” I thought. That was hardly a unique perspective.

            It has been that way throughout our collective history. In the Civil War we held soldiers in horrendous prison camps. Sherman burned a path through Georgia and the Carolinas; Lincoln usurped the Constitution and set aside habeas corpus relief. In World War I, German-Americans were rounded up; Congress passed numerous laws which denied basic First Amendment rights of dissent and speech. World War II and we rounded up American citizens of Japanese descent. We put them in “internment camps” and took their property.  In the name of victory we bombed cities in Germany: Cologne, Dresden, Hamburg, killing tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, noncombatants. Against Japan we vaporized two whole cities.

            During Korea we allowed Senator McCarthy and his band of red-baiters to destroy fellow citizen’s lives by declaring them “communists.” Vietnam and we watched our air force drop napalm on villages, Agent Orange defoliage on our own troops; we had My Lai and other atrocities. No, our history is replete with our own acts of barbarism.

            Men have been held at Guantanamo Bay for over thirteen years without charge. Our government tortured men: waterboarding, “rectal” feeding, threats with sexual attack, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, cold and chained to a wall; in the name of saving our country. But what is worth saving if we commit to that type of behavior?

            “Who we aspire to be.” I have the utmost respect for Senator McCain. He knows full well the pain and anguish of torture. In the hands of our Vietnamese enemy, McCain was repeatedly beaten. He was hung by his arms until his shoulders came out of socket. He was kept in solitary confinement, deprived of food and medical care. Senator McCain says he would have done anything, said anything, to stop the torture. Torture is just that – torture. I read in Louie Zamperini’s amazing biography, “Unbroken,” of the horrendous treatment he withstood at the hands of sadistic guards. Is that who we aspire to be?

            British philosopher Edmund Burke said “the only thing necessary for evil to succeed is for a few good men to do nothing.” Evil is never overcome by evil. You overcome evil by good. An editorial cartoon published on the day the CIA report was released shows a grinning OBL in hell holding up a sign that says, “We win.” “Who we aspire to be.”

            For the last six and a half years I have seen some of the worst in men … and some of the best. I have had to rethink every preconceived notion I held about justice, law, and my obligations as a Christian, a citizen, a human being. I know that evil will never be overcome by evil. We must aspire to be like the Good Samaritan, to show mercy to those in need and forgiveness to those who cause us harm.

            As the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was led to the gallows, the SS doctor observing his execution noted he had never seen a man so at peace as he faced his death. “They may kill your body, but they can’t kill your soul.” Those words are in the Gospel of Luke. They killed Bonhoeffer on a spring day in 1945 but his memory, his writings, his faith lives on. And his executioners? Long forgotten. Who do we aspire to be?

 

Matt the Vet

I saw Matt arrive a few months ago from another prison. He’s a vet – Post 9/11 – and served two tours in Afghanistan on the Hindu-Kush Range, the mountainous region dividing Afghanistan from Pakistan. I recognized Matt when he walked in; he and I had been at the jail together. He sat there awaiting sentencing – and DOC transfer – for bank robbery. He used a shotgun and robbed two banks in the greater Richmond area of a little over $50,000. “When I mustered out, I couldn’t find a decent job,” he told me back then. For those two robberies Matt received 9 years each – two sentences to be run “consecutively,” i.e. one after the other. Eighteen years, a PTSD rating, a purple heart (shrapnel wound to the leg) … “Thank you for your service to your country.”

            When I first met Matt he was very angry and bitter. He had enlisted after 9/11 to defend his country. Then, he climbed to the ranks of Sargent and did multiple deployments while people at home waved flags, put bumper stickers on new cars that said “we support our troops” – yet less than 1% of the population had anyone in uniform – and the country knew nothing of the places their sons and daughters were sent to fight and die. They cared even less about the ramifications of America’s political decisions being made which effected lives of those troops. Benjamin Franklin said, “Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel flees.” Old Ben understood modern America.

            This generation of vets – the post 9/11 young men and women – are no different than the Vietnam vets. America talks a good game about service, but the political consensus, the political will is “fuck them.” Harsh? Yes. But 9/11 vets have higher PTSD rates, higher homelessness, unemployment, suicides, and incarceration rates than other returning vets … and still no one seems to care.

            Matt’s not the bitter, angry young man he was when I met him in 2009. And he’s here to take advantage of his VA education benefits, earn his degree and move on with his life. Matt mellowed – prison will do that to you. You see how screwed up this place is; you realize how much worse off others have it; and you find your faith. For Matt, that was converting to Islam. For me, it was believing that Sunday school song “Jesus loves me, yes I know …”

            In the weeks to come I’m going to profile Matt and the other vets. I want people to see there is more to some of the felons in here than we might assume. There are fourteen young men in here who served their country after 9/11. For eight of them, they were in harm’s way, saw combat multiple times. Does that excuse their crimes? No. But, there is more to the men in here than just their criminal records.

Thinking About an eBook

The other night, I read an interesting piece in USA Today about a recent Barnes & Noble eBook “daily special” of Eric Metaxas amazing biography of martyred German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Selling as an eBook for $1.99, Bonhoeffer’s amazing life story sold tens of thousands of copies in a short time and thrust the book to number 19 on the paper’s weekly bestsellers list.

I read (and wrote about) the Bonhoeffer book months ago.  I found it a difficult read, very cerebral, theologically driven, and yet one of the most powerful books I’d ever read.  Bonhoeffer was a brilliant, serious Christian who, I believe, would offer scathing criticism of 21^st century American faith trends.  I wondered, as I read the article, if all those readers knew what they were getting into.

Inside my wall locker I display two small items.  The first is a color drawing of the Archangel Michael.  A friend, and Episcopal Rector, sent it to me shortly after my arrival at the receiving unit.  “Michael is the archangel who protects us,” his letter stated.  I kept “Michael” under my pillow, looking at him daily as I dealt with the filth and inhumanity of DOC’s Powhatan Receiving Center.

The second item is a poem penned by Bonhoeffer while imprisoned by the Nazi’s and awaiting his execution.  Simply titled “On Waking in Prison”, it is a powerful testament to this man’s undying faith in his Lord even as the hangman’s noose drew closer.

Bonhoeffer felt compelled by his faith to challenge the Nazi regime, the status quo.  He became a leader of the Covenant Church movement, separating a number of Lutheran parishes away from the mainline German Lutheran churches which, at best, quietly acquiesced to the Nazi’s rule of terror and, at worst, actively participated in Hitler’s dreams of ethnic cleansing and world domination.

Lest we too quickly applaud Bonhoeffer for his deeds; let’s remember the Nazis were a legitimately recognized political organization.  Hitler’s rise to power came about by the force of political calculation and legitimacy.  There was no government overthrow.  The Nazis entered politics, Hitler was asked to form a government and the German people – a majority at least – willingly followed along as law after law was passed.  There was no coup, there was simple acquiesce by the German people to fear and economic despair and the deep-seated desire to have simple answers to complex societal issues.

And what of Bonhoeffer?  He willingly broke the legitimate laws of his nation because he believed God called humankind to a higher order than the laws on the books.  Bonhoeffer was willing to fight the legitimate government of his nation, challenge the conventional wisdom of his people and be imprisoned and executed to remain true to his God.  An amazing man.  A true Christian.  I wonder how many of us would be willing to do the same; give up job, family, freedom, our lives for our faith.

Bonhoeffer challenged the conventional wisdom of his day – and our day – that found faith to be an easy exercise.  It’s not.  It’s painful and lonely and it involves suffering but you press on anyway because God requires you to do so. You are His child; your eternity is secure.  You are compelled, therefore, to do right even in the face of unwinnable odds.

I wonder what Bonhoeffer would say to modern American Christians; white, upper-income families believing they are blessed because they have two cars, a half million dollar mortgage, a recovering 401k.  What would he say about our reaction to 9/11, to the denial of rights to “enemy combatants”, about our step by step dismantling of personal freedom in the name of security?  What would Bonhoeffer say about the rights call for a wall to “protect” the border?  What would Bonhoeffer say about America’s staggering incarceration number (2.3 million) and supervised probation and parole number (almost 5 million) at a cost of $200 billion per year (criminal justice spending) most of which goes to arrest, try, convict and incarcerate nonviolent offenders?  What would Bonhoeffer say about 46 million Americans using food stamps while our defense budget continues to grow and unemployment exceeds 9%?

I may be mistaken, but I think he would simply ask each believer “What does the Lord require of you?”  As I said earlier, this fast selling eBook will be a difficult read.  But, if we truly believe, we will take heart.  We will get involved.  We will demand justice, seek mercy and forgiveness. 

Ultimately, our power, our future lies not in the military, economic or legal system of this country.   Ultimately, it rests with the Lord who “gives the solitary a home and brings forth the prisoners to freedom”.  What would Bonhoeffer say?  He’d say what I see every morning when I read his poem.  As the psalmist said, “be strong and let your heart take courage.”

About H.L.

Imagine the unimaginable.  One moment you have everything.  In the next your entire adult life’s work stripped away.  The future is hopeless.  The present meaningless.  It’s all gone.  It doesn’t matter.  I thought about all that as I listened to “H.L.” during a TV interview this week to remember ten years after the towers collapsed.  It seemed appropriate that as I listened to “H.L.” I recalled my daily devotional reading from Job.  Appropriate it seems when we ask why, why God, why.

“H.L.” is Howard Lutnick, CEO of the bond trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald.  On the morning of September 11 Lutnick – a man admired and feared in bond trading circles, who oversaw a billion dollar trading company – took his young son to his first day of Kindergarten rather than heading straight to his company offices on the 105^th floor of the North Tower.  While at the school his cell phone began vibrating nonstop.  A teacher finally told him, “A plane tore through the building”. 

Lutnick raced to the towers.  What he saw was complete carnage:  people streaming out of the towers; flames and black, acrid smoke billowing up and out, engulfing the floors where his company was housed.  Within minutes the towers collapsed and with them 657 of the 900 employees of Cantor Fitzgerald.

In the mere wisp of a minute, Lutnick lost his brother, his closest friends, entire divisions of his company, almost every business record the company possessed.  Cantor Fitzgerald owed $75 billion in bonds bought and not yet paid for.  He had no way of paying the debt, no company.

He was covered in dust, bewildered, frightened, numb.  Imagine – six funerals every day for over 100 straight days.  He called his wife to tell her he was alive and learned she had spoken to his brother only minutes before the building collapsed.

What do you do when everything is gone, everything you worked for destroyed?  Lutnick couldn’t get home that night.  He walked to a friend’s home – one of the few executives at Cantor Fitzgerald who survived - and knocked.  His friend answered.  He had somehow survived, getting on an elevator before the attack.  He was covered in blood.  “Are you hurt?”  “No”, his friend said.  “It’s not my blood.  I don’t know whose it is.”

So that night these two men talked.  They had lost everything in their professional careers and the people who were with them and believed in them were slaughtered.  Lutnick made a decision.  He could fail, he could die penniless, but he wouldn’t let the lives of those people not count for something.  That night, amidst the carnage and despair and fear of 9/11, Cantor Fitzgerald was reborn.  Against impossible odds, tears, setbacks, funerals, Cantor Fitzgerald rebuilt.  They became a stronger company after 9/11.  And Howard Lutnick?  He became a better man.

“What does that have to do with prison?”  You might ask.  Prison breaks you.  It tears you apart.  I look around this compound and see the men – so many, too many – who have given up.  They believe in their heart that it is hopeless.  Their lives are and always will be defined by their crime, their screwed up childhoods, families, and loves.  They have been letdown by friends, betrayed by spouses who said they loved them then left when things got tough.

And then there are the ones who fight back, who find meaning in their imprisonment and a reason to go forward.  They will succeed in spite of what their families think; in spite of the bias and prejudice they encounter.  They will overcome.

Howard Lutnick is a hero. He’s no saint.  He was and is a hard-driven, perhaps arrogant CEO making way too much money for what he does.  But when he stared into the abyss of his future on 9/11 he found faith and courage, two qualities that too often are in short supply.

Dr. Martin Luther King said,

“Faith is taking the next step when you can’t even see the stairway.”

For me and so many other inmates, King’s words, Lutnick’s actions, are motivation for us to overcome.  In everyone’s life there comes that day where evil is thrust upon you or your sins catch up to you and you confront the mystery that Job saw.  You can ask why or you can take the next step forward.  Faith, redemption, begins with that step.

Conspiracies Everywhere

I was an unwilling participant to a conspiracy conversation the other day which got me thinking about failures in the nations corrections philosophy that are so prevalent today.  A couple of the young black college guys were debating the “real causes” of 9/11.  All three of these guys had read a revisionist “historians” (the guys not really a historian) take that the CIA and White House led the attack.  When I challenged their “research” they claimed I was too gullible.  “America’s the shit Larry.  Don’t you know that after what you’ve been through?”

Ignorance is alive and well in the inmate population.  Guys will buy any conspiracy theory – join bizarre prison created “religions” with off the wall theories.  I used to find it mildly entertaining.  But, like the rapid rise of another group of conspiracy believers – the Tea Party crew – I’m feeling a great deal of unease.  Prison spurs kooky views.  It’s up to the corrections professionals to address it.

When I was still held at the Henrico Jail I met an early twenties white kid who was an amazing artist.  He could draw anything – portraits, scenery, cars, you name it.  He was also covered in Nazi tattoos.  One morning around 5:00 as was my custom, I was drinking coffee, writing in my journal.  The kid sat down with me with a pained expression on his face.

“Mr. Larry, you’re a nice man.  I’m afraid the darks are gonna hurt you when you get to prison.  You need to join the Aryans.”

I thanked him for worrying about me but politely told him I didn’t need a white supremist group to keep me safe in prison.

Then I get to prison and I run up on Aryans, Hispanic gangs, a half dozen black gangs, Nation of Islam, Five Percenters, and a host of other fringe groups who each espouse a philosophy built on a corrupt power elite beating down on them.

Ask the average inmate to consider the real cost (in dollars) to taxpayers to keep them locked up and they will tell you prisons make money.  Why do they believe that when the evidence overwhelmingly shows the financial drain corrections has become? “If you were right Larry it’d make no sense to keep us locked up without early release.  Only a fool would run a system like that?” (Are you listening Governor McDonnell?).

Black inmates are suspicious of white inmates.  Two groups:  NOI and Five Percenters (anti-white) are recruiting members in droves.  Why?  Because they offer simplistic explanations for the despair that permeates the lives of inmates.  It is easier to accept your station in life believing “white America is a racist country bent on destroying blacks through prisons and drugs” (and one need only look at the extraordinarily high percentage of blacks incarcerated to see why this gains traction) than to engage in an in-depth study of this country’s racial schizophrenia.

As I tutor guys in History, English, Philosophy and the Social Sciences I am constantly surprised how little these guys know.  They have very little knowledge of history and are unable to synthesize events as they develop across historical/sociological lines.  Every event can be boiled down to some knee-jerk neo-Marxian theory of power and suppression of people.

So, what I do is, when asked, I state the truth.  I let the facts speak.  Does it change some things?  Sometimes.  Guys hunger to know why.  Prison should be a place of honest reflection.  Instead, it is a jungle of lies, anger and ignorance.  And the system feeds those three.  Courts aren’t “blind” arbiters of justice; sentences are disparate, even when crimes are similar; race and money matter in too many convictions and sentences.  Prisons become dumping grounds with too few programs, too little educational opportunities and sadistic guards and inmates vying for supremacy.

Men lose hope and without hope there is nothing.  In one of the most moving scenes in “The Shawshank Redemption”, Andy, sorting records in the warden’s office, barricades himself inside and takes over the prison speakers.  He puts on an operatic aria and the prison suddenly stills as the men listen to two women sing in Italian.  He is caught and goes to the hole.

The next scene, he is in chow – thirty days later with his friends.  They sit and stare in amazement at Andy looking fresh after such a long period in the hole.  “How’d you do it?” they asked.

“I listened to Mozart the whole time.” 

“You had music back there?”

Andy pauses, “In my mind.  They can physically keep me here, but in my mind I’m free.  I still have hope.”

There’s a reason hope lives even in a place as dehumanizing as prison.  Hope is about truth, and beauty, and love.  Too many men in prison have given up on hope.  They look for simple explanations; they see nothing but time.  Until prisons become places of hope, conspiracy theories will thrive; anger, despair and hatred will have homes; and fringe groups will flourish.

Hopefully, it will change.

Ten Years After (2)

It is one week until the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attack of 9/11, “the day that changed America”.  As I sit here in this prison dormitory I recognize how much my own life changed.  On 9/11 I was an in-house attorney for a large, Virginia headquartered property and casualty insurer.  I was “happily” married to my college sweetheart.  We were the stereotypical upper income, white American couple with two “perfect” sons, a “perfect home”, a “perfect” life.  After the attack, all that would be tested.  I was sure what our country needed to do.  I was equally sure what I needed to do.  Ten years after, I confess I was wrong on almost every count.

Just as I sold my soul to prove some vague, abstract point about love, commitment and family, so too did America after 9/11.  We are not a better nation for our reaction to 9/11.  America has lost its moral framework.  We were wrong in our reaction to the evil foisted upon us; we are wrong for our behavior – at home and abroad.  I fear the lives lost that day and in the years since in Afghanistan and Iraq will be for nothing.  As Judy Collins mournfully sang, “When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?”

Luke, in his Gospel, recounts Jesus speaking to the multitudes.   Over and over the Savior says “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you; give to everyone who asks you… “He calls on his followers to forgive, show mercy.  And then He brings forward these words:

“You call me ‘Lord, Lord’, and do not do what I say.” 

In other words, we talk a good game, but we don’t put our money where our mouth is.

 A few years ago a deranged gunman broke into an Amish schoolhouse and shortly thereafter brutally murdered a number of young Amish girls.  What was the reaction in the Amish community?  They prayed for the dead gunman and wrapped his family in compassion and mercy.

I was all in favor of obliterating Afghanistan.  I bought into the doctrine that you are either “with us or against us”.  Arrest foreign nationals and hold them without trial?  No problem.  Torture to get information?  I’m OK with that.  Kill thousands of men, women and children in Afghanistan and Iraq – “collateral damage” – in the name of winning the war on terror?  Small price to pay for “safety”.  That was all “PI Larry” (pre-incarceration Larry).  Now I see my country:  the one $17 trillion in debt where 46 million people need food stamps, where over 2.3 million people are behind bars, the vast majority of which are locked up for nonviolent crimes – and I ask what of our founding declarations that all “men” are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?  Wonderful words, but just words if we are willing to sell our collective soul for safety and fail to show mercy.

Politicians get standing ovations for demanding that the Ten Commandments be posted in schools and offices to remind us of our “Judeo-Christian” heritage.  But, I wonder what would Jesus say about our reaction to 9/11?  What do we make of His Sermon on the Mount, His call to forgive “seven times seventy”?  We talk a good game but we fall way, way short.

On 9/11, as I detailed in other blogs, I consoled my then wife as she sobbed, worried our sons would be drawn into some worldwide conflagration.  We made love that night, two people trying to cling to innocence in a world seemingly gone mad. Shortly after, in an attempt to “prove” our life would be better after the attack, I began stealing increasingly larger sums of money.  I had stolen before – then always to gain some psychological response of love and appreciation from my “soulmate” who deep down – I knew didn’t feel for me what I felt for her.  After 9/11 I was determined to have it all!

Ironically, as I sit in here I see the same convulsive behavior in my country.  Why did they hate us so?  We asked after 9/11.  And then immediately we retaliated, launching attacks aimed at eliminating the danger. 

But danger can’t be totally eliminated.  We will always face the risk of someone – anyone – trying to do the unthinkable.  Much like I had to learn that I couldn’t make someone feel what I needed, we need to learn there is not absolute safety.  There is pestilence, natural disasters and the occasional sociopath lurking.  But if we truly believe in God, then we know we are called to be strong and courageous.  We are not to fear, though “the mountains fall in the sea”.  God is our help; not B1 bombers, not drones, nor laser technology.  We can’t violate our own core principles in the name of security.

I read a piece in the September issue of “Esquire” concerning a Sudanese man captured and held at Guantanamo Bay for ten years.  He was held chained and naked in a freezing cell for days on end; hands chained above his head, hands and feet chained to the floor; denied access to counsel.  Is this justice?  Is this an appropriate response?  Should this be tolerable in America?  This alleged “mastermind” (who coincidentally is uneducated and speaks no English) was eventually given a 34 month sentence (that’s right – 34 months).  

I have witnessed firsthand the barbarism and unjust circumstances of prison.  A just, compassionate society can do better.  As I sit here, I wish we as a nation had done things differently.  I wish I had acted differently.

There is a Bible parable I return to often as I struggle to make sense of my life.  At the end of Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount he records the savior telling His followers to hear the words and act on them.  They will be “like the man who dug his foundation on the rocks. And when the flood came and the torrents burst against the house” it could not be shaken.

The part that so intrigues me in the story says “when the flood” comes, not “if”.  Faith is like that house on the rock.  Troubles are inevitable in our individual and collective lives. But by faith, we are sustained.  My marriage, I realized, was not built on a strong foundation.  Love and commitment were mere shifting sand.   The rule of love, opposition to torture?  Those deeply held “virtues” of America’s psyche were also cast in sand.

Ten years later and what have we learned?  Is war ever justified?  Is torture ever acceptable?  Does safety trump freedom?

A poet/songwriter once wrote a piece comparing America, his America, to a wayward love.  She was breaking his heart because she couldn’t see how beautiful she was; she didn’t understand how her behavior was killing him.  Ten years after 9/11, divorced, alone in prison, I look at my country and I understand what he meant.  The past ten years have not been kind to her.

The Boxer

There’s been a Simon & Garfunkel song that has been rolling through my mind the last week.  Two week’s after 9/11, Paul Simon, alone on a stage with just his guitar sang “The Boxer” to a hushed Saturday Night Live audience.  It’s a song about being pummeled and beaten down, yet finding the strength to stand back up.

“In a clearing stands a boxer

A fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every blow that layed him down
Or cut him til he cried out
In his anger and his shame
I am leaving, I am leaving
But the fighter still remained…”

Three nights ago EL, a young college student, was called to the watch commander’s office at 1:00 am.  The Captain on duty informed him his mother had died suddenly and unexpectedly earlier that evening.  He was allowed to make a collect call to his sister and then requested that he be placed in the hole for a few hours – to grieve – because you don’t cry in prison around other inmates.  He returned later in the day to attend class.  He’s not allowed to attend the funeral.

“Li la Li
Li La Li Li Li La Li”

What makes us keep trying, keep hoping, keep believing when the rational part of our mind, when everyone around us tells us it’s hopeless?  I think often about Dr. Viktor Frankl’s thoughts in “Man’s Search for Meaning”.  There he was confided to a concentration camp, being starved, witnessing the worst in humanity because he “broke the law” (we forget, yet Dr. King pointed it out in his letter from the Birmingham Jail, the actions of the Nazis were carried out according to properly passed laws).  He was sustained by the memories of his wife and their life together.  He would not learn until after the war that his wife had been executed early after their arrest and separation.

I live amongst criminals.  With few exceptions, (Big S being the only guy who is factually innocent) the vast majority of men here broke the law.  But, for an equally vast number, the punishment bears no relationship to the crime.  Yet for the vast majority of these men, they remain hopeful.  They believe something better will come to them.

The writer H. Jackson Browne, Jr. wrote:  “Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.”

When Paul Simon performed his song, New York City and the country were still in a state of shock.  Where once stood the trade centers, there was a ten story pile of smoldering rubble.  The death toll was still not calculated “but the fighter still remained”.

I love that line.  I love the image it creates.  Everyone one of us bears scars of hurt and shame.  We all feel pain.  We all suffer loss.  At times, we all want to give up and quit.  But, like Simon’s boxer, we stand back up battered and bruised and vow to fight on.

This blog isn’t about anything in particular that occurred.  It may have come about over the past few weeks as a group of students I hadn’t worked with before started coming to me for help.  As I worked with these guys invariably one of them would ask “Is it true you haven’t heard from your kids?” or “Your wife divorced you?” or “You really got fifteen years for embezzlement?”  Maybe it was the two officers last weekend reminding me how many lies were printed about me in the paper after my arrest and then officer H saying “you’re a decent guy; you deserved better”.

I asked DC, a great boxer in his teens, if he was ever put on the canvas.

“Yeah”, he said.  “Guy beat me senseless and I hit the deck.”
“What’d you do?” I asked.
“Got up.  Can’t stay down.  No matter how bad it hurt, I couldn’t let ‘em beat me.”

Couldn’t let ‘em beat me.  The fighter still remained…

POSTSCRIPT:  In an ironic twist, USA Today columnist Craig Wilson wrote a piece two days after I penned this on the same topic.  Aptly titled “You can’t turn back now…” it included the following lines from poet Annie Johnson Flint:

“Have you come to the Red Sea place in your life.

Where, in spite of all you can do,
There is no way out, there is no way back.
There is no other way but through?”

Wilson then concludes:  “Getting down that path isn’t always easy.  We stumble.  We fall.  But we get up and march on.”

Amen to that.

Memorial Day

It’s Memorial Day weekend, a time when the nation turns its thoughts to veterans, especially those who’ve paid the ultimate price on the battlefield.  Post 9/11 much has been made about the respect this country now shows those who served.  “The country has healed from Vietnam”, is a common refrain heard in the popular press.

Yet that perception doesn’t match reality.  It is a disturbing truth, but veterans of this nation‘s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have higher levels of suicide, homelessness, PTSDs, drug and alcohol abuse, than the general population.  And, they end up in prison and judges don’t care that they risked their lives oversees.

Of the 96 men in my side of the building, 34 served in the military.  Twelve of those served in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Two older inmates are combat veterans of Vietnam.   For those fourteen who served in combat “defending this nation’s freedom” as so many commentators like to point out – meant little to them as they faced significant prison sentences.  Judges, juries didn’t care that they fought in Fallujah or Helmut Province.  But for some hardworking volunteers from the American Legion who come out and meet with these vets and assist them with access to benefits they earned, they are largely forgotten.  Like their homeless brothers suffering from PTSD and drug and alcohol problems, there are no thank yous for these vets.  America should be ashamed.

One of my students is a bright New Yorker named Pauly.  He served two tours with the Marines in Iraq and was in the bloody battle of Fallujah.  His photos of unit friends, two of whom were killed, line his locker.

Pauly returned to Virginia (his wife’s home) after his second tour.  He began taking pain pills (“help me sleep”). When he couldn’t get enough, he forged four prescriptions and four checks to cover the cost.  Convicted, a Chesterfield Circuit Judge told him “you survived two tours in Iraq; you can do three years in prison.”  Nice comment your honor.

There’s Rick.  His wife left him while he was in Afghanistan for a second tour.  He returned to Southwest Virginia with no job, no wife and a house he couldn’t afford.  He took an unloaded shotgun to a local bank and got $6000 (“I didn’t care if they shot me”).  The judge told him “a lot of men went to war and didn’t rob a bank” as he sentenced Rick to ten years.  I’m not sure what the judge knows about being in a combat zone; he admitted from the bench “he never had the privilege of serving.”

There are dozens of stories like that in here and hundreds of pages of trial transcripts confirming the words.  Then there’s Saleem.  He served as a medic in Vietnam.  He risked his life daily to save the lives of dozens of wounded men.  Why was he a medic?  Because he was a pacifist.  Rather than seek conscientious objector status, he agreed to serve.

Later, during a drug deal gone bad – a drug habit that began in Indochina in that war zone – Saleem killed a man.  He received a life sentence with parole eligibility after twenty years.  Every year, since his twentieth year in, he comes up for parole.  Every year, for twelve straight years, he has been denied parole.  It is possible Saleem will never leave prison.  That is wrong.

DC’s father served in Korea as a black infantryman.  He fought in some of the bloodiest campaigns there and endured terrible racial hostility.  “I went because that’s what I was supposed to do.”  DC’s older brother, a baseball star drafted by the Phillies, died in Vietnam.

All these men who fought bled and in some cases died, did so because they believed in the ideals this nation espouses.  They deserve the same. They deserve second chances.

General William Tecumseh Sherman said “war is hell”.  So is prison.  These vets deserve our gratitude, our forgiveness for their wrongs, and their freedom.