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.

Ignoring James

A friend pointed out the other day that I seem to focus a good deal of attention on the New Testament Book of James. I thought about her comment a few minutes and realized she was right. James wrote a straight-forward, short letter to believers that says, “You want to call yourselves followers of the Risen Christ, then do this …” He doesn’t pull punches. He tells his readers there will be trials, tough times, pain and difficulty, but you go forward, “consider it all joy …” because these tests produce endurance. I still remember the first time I read those words when everything (no exaggeration, I mean everything) was lost. James’s words couldn’t be any clearer, I thought to myself sitting in that cell at the jail. Suck it up, tough it out, endure, persevere, overcome … have faith.

James is so blunt. Perhaps that comes from being the Lord’s half-brother (think about that: “Mom always treats you better … like you’re God!”); or perhaps James just understands that to be a believer you can’t just “talk the talk.” No, you have to “walk the walk.” As he puts it, “But prove yourself doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.” I thought about those words the other afternoon as I once again saw the hypocrisy in our politicians’ words.

“Obama would rather spend money on food stamps than a strong military.” Those were the words put forth by former Vice-President Dick Cheney reacting to budgets and troop reductions in the Pentagon proposed by the Obama Administration. And, I thought of my Bible reading and remembered a number of instances where Jesus fed the masses and ministered to the poor. I couldn’t think of a single instance where the Savior told his followers to spend more on weapons. I thought about the Book of Judges’ Story of Gideon. How God told him to only use 300 soldiers, not 10,000, so that God could show by His power our enemies are vanquished. We profess we are a Christian nation yet we somehow think by our own hand, our own might, our military strength we live free. We are deluding ourselves. James reminds us to care for “the widows and orphans.” We are judged by our compassion and our mercy, not our human might.

Then there was the member of the Virginia House of Delegates who recently commented on the failure of a bill that would have drastically cut phone rates for inmates. Phone call rates for those behind bars – and their families – are beyond usurious. A twenty-minute, in-state call from the facility can run over $15.00. Why? Because the state signs exclusive, kickback contracts with one of three “corrections telephone system providers.” That provider then kicks back a percentage of the annual revenue to the state. Virginia derives $3 million from their sweetheart deal with CTL.

What did this politician say when pressed for comment on a bill that would have 1. made phone rates in prisons and jails the same as competitive rates on the streets, or 2. specifically earmark all monies “earned” by the state under the CTL contract for prison education and re-entry? He said, “They broke the law, they can pay the higher rates.”

Really? Let’s see … there are thousands of men and women sitting in jail cells who have not yet been convicted of anything. And for those who are convicted, over 90% will return to their communities. Most are from poor families (I know this will come as a shock to the delegate, but income disparity, education level, and race play significant rules in who ends up in prison). The Commonwealth talks out of both sides of its mouth. On the one hand, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually to prepare incarcerated men and women for release and reintegration in their communities. And they know family connections are a major factor in a released offender’s success. On the other hand, the state has in place policies which bleed poor families. Outrageous phone rates lead to less family contact.

But this isn’t about economics; it’s about hypocrisy and “being a doer” of the world. This same delegate talks about the push toward marriage rights for gays as an affront to what God believes marriage should be. Well, here’s the thing about tossing your alleged Christian views into the mix. Most of the time, your views line you up with the Pharisees, not Jesus. I’d like the delegate to point out any case in the New Testament where Jesus turned his back on those who were different. He didn’t. In fact, he drew the outcasts closer. It was the Samaritan woman whom He explained to about the “water of life.” The lepers, the mentally ill, the blind and deaf were made whole. It was a law-breaker (the adulterous woman) through whom Jesus taught us to avoid judgment because in God’s eyes, we are all sinners. And, it was the thief on the cross who full of remorse for his wrongdoing was given eternal life.

We live in a world that professes one thing and does another. Jesus never denied aid to a hurting person based on their race, creed, nationality, or sexual orientation. Jesus never sided with those living by their definition of the law; He sided with those living the law in their hearts. And so it goes today. Are we really much different from Palestine in AD 30?

“If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in the mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.”

James was pretty clear with his admonitions to believers. Seems like its time we start paying attention to what he said.

Election Day, Part 1

In July, 1776, delegates from the thirteen break away colonies gathered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to sign their names to a declaration.  From that moment forward the uprising that had begun a year earlier could lead to only one conclusion:  it would be independence or death.

The author of the Manifesto, Thomas Jefferson, borrowed heavily from Scottish political philosopher John Locke when he penned that people “are endowed with certain unalienable rights…”  Jefferson listed three:  life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  The men gathered in Philadelphia, this nation’s founding fathers, understood the importance of the words they were placing their signatures to.  God, not government, gives human beings certain rights.  Freedom, liberty, are God’s dictate, not some privilege that can be handed down by a ruler.

It was a daring statement of faith in the absolute rights of humankind derived from the sovereign Lord.  And, it formed the basis of the most successful experiment in republican democracy the world has ever known.  “We the people…in order to form a more perfect union…”

I write this fifteen days from the presidential election.  Supporters of both candidates will tell you this is the most important election in the nation’s history.  I’m not so sure.   Somehow the crises affecting this country in 1860 when Lincoln was elected, and again in 1864 at his re-election, make this era pale by comparison.

This piece isn’t about Romney or Obama.  This is about voting.  Virginia is one of only four states that do not automatically reinstate voting rights to felons upon their release from prison.  This election day some 350,000 Virginians will be unable to vote solely because they carry a scarlet “F” on their record.  Voting is not a privilege.  It is an unalienable right of a people to have a say in their governance. 

The current Governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, has touted his administration’s efforts to restore voting rights to felons.  He should be applauded.  In less than three years in office, McDonnell has streamlined the process (it is now just filing a simple downloadable form with his office versus the former cumbersome process of petitioning), and restored voting rights to nearly 2,000.  That’s more than any previous modern age Virginia Governor.

The problem is McDonnell, like his predecessors and for too many politicians, believes voting is a privilege and that government can decide the terms and conditions of exercising that privilege.  Disenfranchisement, even after over 225 years, still shows itself each election cycle.

It is an irony not lost on me that this nation, “the shining city on the hill” as former President Ronald Reagan described her, is the only western nation that restricts felons from voting.  Even in this country, all but seventeen states automatically restore voting rights to felons as they exit prison.

Ohio State University law professor Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, a critical assessment of the nation’s mass incarceration push, argues that voting is a fundamental right of citizenship which cannot be usurped by a felony conviction.

And the arguments used to deny felons the right to vote are the same arguments used earlier in this nation’s history to deny women, the poor, and ethnic and racial minorities a say in the future direction of this land.

A few years ago, during George W. Bush’s presidency, this nation became transfixed as we watched millions of Iraqis brave bombings and threats of murder to cast ballots in their first democratic election after the overthrow of the dictator Saddam Hussein.

And we watched as these citizens dipped their fingers in purple ink and displayed them to the world saying “our vote matters”.  I remember one man in particular, carried his child in his arms.  He’d been imprisoned during the Hussein years.  And he proudly walked forward and voted.  “I want my child to know it’s not your past that matters.  It’s your future.”

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights…”

Amazing words.  It’s a shame this nation, this state doesn’t believe them at election time.