Consider This

This blog was written in October, 2014. 

            I found a quote recently from Albert Einstein. He said, “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy truth.” Al knew truth was relative. Truth, the good professor understood, doesn’t depend on your socio-economic status, color of your skin, or luck to be born “here” instead of “there.” We place so much respect in “our way” of life, “our” notions of justice and decency and being “right” all the time. And in doing so, we may miss the larger truth – the real truth.

            I was fortunate as an undergrad student to have an advisor who was a symbolic interactionist (he was also an ordained Methodist minister). I’ll never forget him saying, “Where you stand (on an issue) depends on where you sit (live economically, racially). Think police are doing a good job? Chances are you aren’t black. Einstein and my advisor were talking, to large extent, about the same thing. You have to be able to see the other guy’s perspective. Truth is universal; so is empathy.

            I love the study of history. I am fascinated by the human capacity to proceed forward, in spite of our sometime best efforts to destroy ourselves. I am awed by the seemingly ordinary man who goes forth and does the extraordinary. Joshua Chamberlain, commanding officer of a depleted Maine Regiment commands the far right flank of the Union line at Gettysburg. He and his few hundred men are all that stands between the confederate forces under General Lee and a straight path to Washington D.C. “Hold at all cost,” he is told.

            And Chamberlain, a Professor of classics at a small college, what does he know about military tactics? He knows what he must do. Exhausted and out of ammunition, his men respond when Chamberlain orders “fix bayonets” and leads them on a charge into the advancing enemy. The battle turns; the Union is saved.

            “Unthinking respect.” Every day I tell these young college students to judge what they hear on the news or read in the paper with a critical eye. What is driving the story? Obama is neither the best – nor the worst – president in this country’s history. What, I ask them, is the writer’s perspective?

            What, you may ask, does this have to do with a prison blog? A lot. I was one of those guys who knew “everything.” Republicans were always right; we were justified in whatever we did in the Middle East. Morality, justice, truth – those were “Pax Americana.” I wrapped myself in a civil Religion that told me God sang the National Anthem and 3000 dead in New York city was worse than 80,000 incinerated in Dresden, or Nagasaki.

            And a funny thing happened after my arrest. I met people who I would have crossed the street to avoid. I met black men, young and bright, who had the same dreams my son had, only their climb for those dreams was so much more difficult. There were nights I felt like Scrooge in Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” I would ask God “Why are you showing me these things?” All the crap I spouted about “justice” in my former arrogant days was all because I was the beneficiary of a rigged game. You know who empathized with me in those terrible days after my sentencing, after my divorce? It was those young, black kids, the gangbangers and drug users, the dregs of the American dream. They told me, “you deserve better;” they showed me compassion.

            I was befriended by a man twice tried for capital murder who faced the death penalty. That man is like an older brother to me and every day I am reminded that redemption is possible in every life. It was DC, in my worst days who reminded me what his “Pops” told him, “A real man will hold the line and do what’s right in spite of the cost.”

            “Truth.” The prison system is a failure. We, as a people, do our best when we show compassion rather than power. The Beatitudes are the real declaration of independence. “Love your enemy,” means just that. God is neither Pro-American not anti-American. He is pro-His children even as we make a mess of this world and our lives.

            This week, I wrote (as I do every month) our college newsletter. I wrote about General Ulysses S. Grant at Shiloh. His Union army was caught off guard and badly mauled. At the end of the first day of battle it appeared his line would collapse. His second in command, William Tecumseh Sherman, found the General sitting beneath a tree on the banks of the Tennessee River. “Rough fight today,” Grant said. “We’ll lick em tomorrow.” Sherman noted in his diary that Grant had the air of a man at peace. Grant gave Sherman orders for a massive counter-attack the next morning, which roared through the Confederate lines. The Union held.

            “Great suffering can change a person.” Eleanor Roosevelt said that about her husband, a man who was born of privilege and yet, his struggle with overcoming polio, the pain and difficulty with walking and standing, transformed him into a president who was prepared when the nation needed him. “The only thing to fear is fear itself.” Crazy, nonsensical words, and yet they are true.

            Consider this: truth isn’t where you sit. Truth exists in our capacity to see our commonality, to understand no one is hopeless, to do right and to remember no government has the market cornered for justice. What does that have to do with prison? Everything.

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.