Thoreau in a Week

American philosopher and essayist Henry David Thoreau said, “Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is prison.”  I don’t profess to be the man Thoreau was talking about, though I do know the American Criminal Justice System is broken.  What passes for justice these days is not what our national myths about justice look like.  And prisons are too full of too many people.  America is a land of 47,000,000 convicts.  That is the number, roughly fifteen percent of the country, who have criminal convictions on their records.  Two million are behind bars with over half of those doing time for nonviolent crimes.  Another six million are on probation or parole supervision.

The “Land of the Free” is now the “Land of the Convicted”.  The cost in real dollars, not to mention lives lost, families broken, and communities damaged, exceeds $60 billion annually.  And that’s just the prison/incarceration costs.  Add to that the cost to prosecute (from arrest, arraignment, bail, hearing, preliminary hearing, etc.) and the real costs exceed $250 billion.  That’s a quarter of a trillion spent annually to arrest, convict, and lock up over one million Americans each year.

The system breeds corruption, graft and incompetence.  One need only read one chapter of Conrad Black’s memoir, “A Matter of Principle”, to see that the issues I raise in this blog are not unique to this Southside Virginia prison.  Every day, in every state and in the Federal system, the mismanaged, unjust, failed corrections paradigm is repeated. 

Each day this week, from Monday through Saturday, an incident occurred here which reinforced everything wrong with prison.  As I write this recap of my week on a crisp winter Sunday morning shortly after completing my run and workout, I can’t help but think of the Psalmist’s words of comfort:  “The Lord hears the groaning of prisoners….”  I have no hope in the elected officials of this state or this nation to do the right thing, the just thing, as it relates to the epidemic of unchecked incarceration.  I have the utmost hope in God.

Monday:  At dinner Monday night an old inmate was unable to stand up after eating.  His legs buckled, his head sagged.  He shook, almost as though he had Parkinson’s disease.  “Do you want to go to medical old timer?”  Two different officers asked him.  “No”, he mumbled.  What did the officers do?  They got a wheelchair and had another inmate wheel him back to our building.

College student, you ask?  No.  The “old timer” is a 67 year old man brought in here directly from the local jail to do his last eight months and go through “re-entry”.  He lacks a high school diploma (education level is 4^th grade).  He is hepatitis B and C positive and uses a cane.

He’s brought back to the building where he promptly rolls out of the wheelchair and into his bed.  Shaking violently, he is unable to stand for count.  The officer waits until count “clears” (twenty minutes) before calling for a wheelchair.  They pack his personal belongings up at 3:00 am.

Tuesday:  At 7:30 am we lose water pressure.  The water intermittently returns through 3:00 pm.  When the pressure fails, ninety-two men are denied access to toilets.  When the water returns it is chocolate brown with sediment.  The officers are instructed to turn off the washers and ice maker; “Don’t want to ruin the filters.”  Inmates are told the water is fit to drink yet carts are wheeled around the compound with bottled water for the staff.  After the night shift arrives – 6:00 pm – a memo from the warden mysteriously appears worded as though notice was given about the water problem in the a.m.  By Wednesday, the water has cleared.

Wednesday:  As we are walking up to the school building we notice all the yard men in line on the boulevard while two “drug” dogs swoop around them.  Looking to our left, we see another team of drug dogs with about ten officers heading into building 6A.  Rumors are all over the compound that the dog team “sat” on two guys in 6A.  Drug use, evidenced by dirty urines, is rampant.  The amount and choice of drugs available on the compound right now isn’t from visitors sneaking them in.  Quantities such as these require CO assistance.

Thursday:  “Adaptor Check.  Adaptor Check.”  It’s 8:00 am and the building intercom suddenly announces that everyone need return to their bunks and show their electronic adaptors.  A dozen officers and counselors swoop in.  I show my Sony CD adaptor to a building counselor and intern from the college nearby.  She asks my name.  When I give it she looks up.  A very pretty college junior, I can’t help but think my ex is her intern advisor and she recognized my name.  Tattooing – with homemade guns – is everywhere on the compound.  And, with the weekly turnover of inmates (fifty each week into and out of re-entry) there is a huge black market in electronics.

Friday:  The four academic aides are two weeks into keeping the lid on DVD porn smuggled into the compound.  Guys are getting laptops and then covering them with towels to take into the bathroom.  I wonder if we should spray the computers with luminal and use a black light to see what body fluids we’re being exposed to.  At the least, we are getting disposable gloves.  It is a moral dilemma.  You don’t rat out another inmate.  But, these guys could be jeopardizing the program.  We do what we can and make arrangements to disable the “D” drive eliminating DVD and CD use.

Saturday:  I have my monthly visit with my parents who drive ninety miles to see me.  My father will be 80 this year.  My mother will turn 78.  They are in excellent health and enjoy an active life.  My mother said to me, “I hate coming here to visit you; the pat downs, the loss of privacy….”  Her chin quivered and her voice trailed off.  I understand.  I hate that they have to see me in here.  But, I appreciate their visits and support.

My father is a Korean War veteran.  He and my mother have been married since 1955.  They have paid their taxes, voted in every election, and represent what this country stood for.  They sat silently in the courtroom when I admitted my wrongdoing.  They listened as the judge handed down a sentence harsher than most get for murder, rape or child sex abuse.  For the first time in their lives they saw that their nation’s criminal justice system isn’t fair.  It’s driven by politics and revenge.  Most importantly, my parents visit because they love me and know I am not the sum total of my conviction.  I think that’s why my close friends and other family continue to stay by my side throughout this sentence.

Just a typical week inside this place.  But, it gave me insight into Mr. Thoreau’s remark.  He didn’t say a perfect man.  He said a just man.  Perhaps there is a reason for all this.  Perhaps one small thing I write will make a difference.  Perhaps Mr. Thoreau will be vindicated and justice will prevail.

The Bar Mitzvah

For a little while last week I thought about writing a piece about Lance Armstrong’s fall from public grace, our society’s insatiable appetite for details of the fall, and the equally insatiable debate that always rages between our demand to know if he’s really sincere (“Is he ashamed because he was caught or ashamed because he sinned?”) in his confession and our desire to give our fallen a “second chance”.  The topic of “second chances” intrigues me – as you can imagine – and I jotted down a fair number of notes, dialog really, about what I’d say to Mr. Armstrong if given the chance.

But, I was sidetracked by a documentary and it got me thinking a different way.  So, Mr. Armstrong will have to wait; but the idea, at least from my way of thinking, that “the truth will set you free”, applies here as well.

The story takes place in Bergen-Belsen, a notorious Nazi death camp.  The chief Rabbi of Amsterdam was there along with thousands of other Jews.  He maintained his faith and organized the prisoners as best as he could.  One day, he approached a young Jewish boy in the camp.  “I understand you will soon turn thirteen.  Would you like to study for your Bar Mitzvah?”  The boy, at first stunned by the offer, agreed.

Each morning the Rabbi would wake the boy at 4:00 and they would sit outside and read from a small Torah.  The boy learned his lessons in Hebrew.  Soon it was time for the ceremony.  But, the Nazi’s frowned on acts of faith.  In a bunkhouse, with the windows covered, the boy was led up to a makeshift altar.

Before he began there was a knock on the door and a lone woman entered.  It was his mother.  They had been separated on arrival at the camp.  The Rabbi, however, had found her and had her smuggled across the camp.

In those filthy, dismal conditions, with hundreds of Jewish people he did not know, the boy recited the text that had carried his father’s people forward from generation to generation.  Through slavery, freedom, captivity in Babylon, pogroms throughout the centuries, he repeated the same prayers every Jewish boy says at his Bar Mitzvah.  At the conclusion, with the ceremony over, the boy was handed a small piece of chocolate as a gift.

Weeks later, the Rabbi again pulled the boy aside and gave him the Torah.  “Keep this and tell the world what took place here”, the Rabbi told the boy.  The Rabbi would not see the end of the war.  But the boy - he survived and made it to Israel.  He would become a scientist and design an experiment that was carried into space on the Space Shuttle Columbia by an Israeli astronaut. 

And the Torah, that small Holy collection of the word of God, was also carried into space.  It was Columbia’s last flight, the fateful re-entry when the space shuttle broke apart over Texas.  The old man who’d been that boy once movingly said the Torah had been “From the depths of hell to the edge of space”.

I love that imagery.  Life is a very difficult proposition.  No one’s life is free of trials or difficulties.  Some, like the boy’s, are thrust on us by the evil that seems to permeate human kind.  He experienced more trial, more difficulty, more inhumanity, than most can comprehend. 

Others, like me, find ourselves in great difficulty and trying circumstances because of our own sin.  We struggle to come to grips with our behavior, our wrongs, and the consequences of our actions even as our lives go further astray.  And the consequences, we realize much too late, are usually beyond what we anticipated or deserved.

Life can break you; it can stretch you and wear you down.  Unless you learn a few simple truths.  First, you always have to have hope.  Without it, there can be no faith.  And faith can move mountains.  It can lead a boy from the concentration camps of Nazi Germany to a life of family, friends and science.

You also have to be kind, in spite of the anger launched against you.  The Rabbi understood that.  It is a lesson I teach myself over and over in here as I deal with a wide array of broken, angry, dysfunctional men and the program system that perpetuates the disgust of prison. 

Finally, you have to forgive and let go of the hurt and pain.  How do you forgive when you’ve been hurt so deeply?  I have spent literally every day of my confinement asking that question.  There isn’t any easy answer.  It’s like the Nike slogan – you “just do it”. 

The other day I learned a new reader – “Tonya” – popped up and was clearly not happy with me.  I wrote a number of witty replies down to “zing” her.  See, I know “Tonya” isn’t “Tonya”.  I know everything that occurred at the office for months after my arrest and my arrest leading to someone being fired did not occur.  But, I also know it’s easier to blame others when we find ourselves in situations we don’t like or understand.  As I’ve said many times on the pages of this blog, what I did was wrong.  But, what I’ve been through and what I lost does not balance with my sins.  And that, I’ve learned is alright.  So I keep hoping.  And I keep believing because my faith tells me that hope does not disappoint.

I had intended to write about falling and your chance at redemption.  Come to think of it, that’s what I wrote about.

General Assembly Blues

It seems ironic to me that inmates at most Virginia DOC facilities dress all in blue.  The General Assembly is back in session and for the 40,000 incarcerated and their families, the 300,000 plus felons denied the right to vote, this is a blue time.

Virginia’s current General Assembly is proving once again that the “best and the brightest” are not drawn to politics.  Some of the recent rhetoric regarding prison reform would be downright laughable but for the effect those words and accompanying votes have on those of us who are behind bars.

Three bills, three battles, hi-lite this fight.  The first, restoring voting rights to non-violent felons at the conclusion of their sentence seemed like a no-brainer.  Conservative Republican Governor Robert McDonnell threw his support behind the measure during his “state of the state” address.  Noting that Virginia is one of only two states that do not restore voting rights to non-violent felons upon completion of their sentence, McDonnell said the following:

            “As a nation that embraces second chances and believes in redemption, we want more productive citizens and fewer people returning to prison.  Automatic restoration of constitutional rights will help reintegrate individuals back into society and prevent future crimes, which means fewer victims and a safer Virginia.”

How did McDonnell’s Republican brethren in the House of Delegates react?  They killed the bill on its first day.

Republican Delegate Dave Albo stated in his opposition to the bill, “When you vote, you get a share in how the country is run.  I don’t want embezzlers to have this right?”  Ouch, Delegate Albo!  I’d argue the idiocy of his premise except I highly doubt the good delegate would understand.

But, here are the facts.  One out of every eighty-nine Virginians is denied the right to vote because of a felony conviction.  This voting exclusion hits minority citizens more as the likelihood of a non-white Virginian being convicted of a crime is significantly higher than a white Virginian (Blacks & Whites use drugs and commit crimes in the same proportions yet Blacks go to prison for drug and other crimes far more often than Whites).

Virginia a believer in the law?  Let’s not forget, Virginia is the same state that gave us “massive resistance” to the U.S. Supreme Court decision desegregating the public schools.  Public schools were closed and white academies sprung up rather than allowing integration.

The Virginia General Assembly is the same legislative body that allowed poll taxes and citizenship tests for Black voters up into the 1960’s.  It is the same body that made it a criminal offense to have interracial marriage (overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967).

Democrats have carried the past two Presidential elections in Virginia and both senate seats.  The days of felons being systematically denied basic civil rights will come to an end, even without Delegate Albo’s support.

And as for the good Delegate, I’d prefer to be a convicted embezzler who turned his life around than an ignorant bigot.  The Delegate has a lot of growing up to do.

The second issue that has failed to gain traction in the Assembly is Delegate Patrick Hope’s attempt to lower the exorbitant phone rates paid by inmates.  Inmates, and their families, pay outrageous phone rates through exclusive prison phone contractors (Global Tel Link being a major player) who then kickback a 35% commission on all calls to Virginia’s General Fund.  These rates, in some cases $2.00 for the first minute and ninety cents each minute thereafter, hurt poor families more.  They also run counter to the Governor and DOC’s pledge to seek to keep families connected.  Inmates who maintain family support are more likely to not recommit.

Delegate Hope, a champion of prison reform, tried a new approach this year.  Keep the rates high; he suggested only if the commissions were then diverted from the general fund to prisoner re-entry.

On a party-line vote the Republican majority killed the bill.  GTL’s lobbyist breathed a sigh of relief.  

Finally, news came that Delegate Jennifer McClellan’s attempt to increase good time earning levels for non-violent felons from 15% to 50% was tabled by another Republican controlled committee.  Had the committee given serious consideration to her bill, by 2018, the state’s inmate population would have dropped by 8,600 inmates at a savings of $200 million.

Delegate McClellan, in presenting her bill said, “This is about giving non-violent offenders who made a mistake a little bit of hope.”  Unfortunately, politics isn’t about hope.  The Virginia Association of Commonwealth Attorneys opposed the measure.  Little wonder.  Their funding is tied to their conviction rate.

Many Republican politicians argued that increasing good time would circumvent “truth in sentencing” and return Virginia to its former “parole” system.  I would suggest that spending $25,129 per inmate annually to keep them incarcerated is a poor use of state resources. 

As I have repeatedly pointed out in the pages of this blog site, “truth in sentencing”, is a misnomer.  Governor Allen’s abolition of parole did nothing to lower the recidivism rate.  All it did was dramatically increase the number of men and women behind bars – from 9,500 to nearly 40,000 and increase the size and cost of Virginia’s prison system (over 13,000 employees, 43 prisons, and in excess of one billion dollars annually).

I’m blue, not just in my jeans and shirt, but in my core.  I realize I have a vested interest in each of these bills and I put myself in this situation by breaking the law.  But, you only need spend a few days in this environment to realize Virginia’s corrections’ paradigm is an abject failure.  Too many people are behind woefully mismanaged, filthy, unsafe prison walls for too long a time.  Virginia’s prison system and harsh, inconsistent sentencing guidelines are not making Virginia safer.

What it is doing is creating a class of disenfranchised citizens who are denied basic voting rights.  They get out of prison and find it difficult to reintegrate into society (you wear a scarlet “F” as a felon in Virginia).  And it’s not just those released from prison.  Felons who have completed their sentences have children and families.  And, there is a general impression among those behind bars – and their families and friends – that the system isn’t fair.  Having lived through almost five years of this experience, I can honestly say there is much lacking in the system.  It is neither fair, nor just.

If there is any good news to report, the times appear to be changing in Virginia.  There’s a Governor’s race this year and the Democrats seem well positioned.  Perhaps, just perhaps, prison reform is on the horizon.  Still, I got them General Assembly blues.

            “I got them General Assembly blues

            From my head down to my shoes

            Whatever bill they bring up

            Us inmates are sure to lose

            Even if it makes sense money wise

            That ain’t what delegates will choose

‘Cause they hate the folks behind bars

            And nothing can change those views

            That’s why I got them General Assembly blues.”

 

Forces of Evolution

On July 3^rd, 1863, after two days of horrendous fighting in the small Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg, the Army of Northern Virginia began to form up behind a tree covered tract. Directly in front of it, on a gradual hill almost two miles away, lay the Army of the Potomac. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surveyed the battlefield. For two days, his rebel army had fought, bled, and died in an attempt to defeat the Union army, march on Washington and gain peace and independence for the Confederacy.

            Lee ordered General George Pickett to lead a grand charge across the open hillside and attack the dug in Union army at its center. A clump of trees sat at the Northern army line’s mile-wide center. “Aim for the copse of trees,” Pickett urged his officers as the 15,000 strong division began the long march forward.

            The troops marched as cannon fire and small bore canister shells tore gaping holes in their ranks. The men reformed and pressed forward moving in an orderly, disciplined march into a furious wall of fire. Barely half strength, they reached the front of the Union line. During furious hand to hand fighting a small number of rebel troops managed to breach the Union defenses and pour through at the copse of trees. For a few dramatic moments the battle hung in the balance with those few Confederate soldiers on the cusp of victory. But, a rapid Union counter-attack overwhelmed the rebel soldiers. In less than six hours the haggard Army of Northern Virginia retreated from the battlefield. They were badly beaten and would never again threaten an invasion of the north. Within two years, the Confederate States of America would cease to exist as an independent body. They foolishly marched into a withering fire and were slaughtered. For a few brief moments at the copse of trees they could sense victory. It was their high water mark. It would never return.

            I thought about that army as I watched the Presidential election returns with ninety other inmates, almost every one of whom had their TV turned on as the news broadcast the results. The vast majority of men in this place saw the re-election of President Obama as a wondrous event. They cannot separate race and economic status from a campaign. Obama, they believe, is just like them. They don’t understand that the President abhors gangs and crime, and that he is part of the “one percent.”

            For me, as I watched more states go “blue” I couldn’t help but think I was witnessing the high water mark of the GOP. Never again, I fear, will they muster sufficient national strength to win. It is ironic that so many in the current Republican Party reject evolution, because evolution explains their predicament. They either evolve or die off. I believe they will choose the latter.

            I spend a great deal of time each day explaining history, philosophy, politics, and economics to my fellow convicted felons. For many in here, I’m the most educated man they’ve ever met. And, as the election approached I found myself explaining the Republican’s positions on virtually every subject. Most of the time, however, I found myself serving as an apologist for the party of Lincoln, a party that has lost its identity and its way.

            Some reading this may wonder what an inmate, a convicted felon, is doing advising anyone. Good question. Perhaps, more than most, I know what it means to lose one’s way. Perhaps, more than most, I know you can change. But staying inert means ruin.

            Republicans lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote even as they took more than 59% of the white vote with sizeable majorities in those ages 35 to 64 and over 65. If the United States was all married, white, church-going families with children, Mitt Romney would be president. The problem the Republicans have is that’s not America in 2013.

            Thirteen percent of all voters were Black. Romney got 7% of those. Eleven percent of all voters were Hispanic (more in some of the crucial swing states). Romney lost that block 71% to 27%. Young voters (18 to 30) accounted for 19% of the votes tabulated. Romney lost them two to one. You will not win many elections where you start out conceding one of every three votes.

            Why doesn’t the party of Lincoln have more sway with minority voters? After all, both Black and Hispanic voters match white marital and church demographics so prized among the Republican establishment. Could it be because of the harsh rhetoric and outrageous social positions taken by Republicans smack of racism?

            I have learned a good deal during my incarceration. Here are a few basics. First, any rational parent, regardless of color, wants their children to have a better life than they do. Second, people come to America for opportunity. In spite of this nation’s faults, it is still looked at as the one place where dreams for a better life can come true. It’s what drove white Puritans here in the seventeenth century and what drives Mexicans, Columbians, Sudanese, Chinese, and people from a hundred other countries to come here.

            In many ways, I now accept that my time in prison has made me into a better man. I’ve become a born again Christian. I don’t say that lightly. I never believed in such a thing. Life, however, when it tears at your gut and you wonder, “Can I survive tonight?” brings you face to face with the Almighty. I was an ordained Deacon, Elder, and Sunday School teacher in my church. And from all appearances, I was a “good Christian.” But I wasn’t. It wasn’t until I sat alone in a cell and had nothing left that I turned to God. I evolved. Perhaps that’s the place the Republican Party now finds itself.

            A good deal will be written about this election. Fault will be assessed. “Romney was the wrong candidate” some will argue. Others will blame the Tea Party for their intolerance on issues such as gay rights, abortion, and birth control. But, like inmates coming to grips with their crimes and atoning for their wrong doing the Republicans must be open to change.

            Abraham Lincoln came to believe that the Civil War, the earth shattering bloodletting the nation underwent was divinely required to end the scourge of slavery. But Lincoln also saw the future. He knew those same battling people could eventually find “the better angels in ourselves.”

            You either evolve or you die. That is the crossroad the Grand Old Party stands before.

Forty Years Later

I read an interesting story the other day about a man, a seventy-something year-old man, whose dreams – if you can call what he’s doing now his dreams from his youth – had come to pass. It may be trite, but as I read his story I thought about patience, and being humble and grateful, even when it appears there’s no logical reason to be either.

His name is Sixto Rodriguez. In 1970 recording executives thought they’d discovered the next Bob Dylan. Rodriguez sang songs with meaning and purpose. His tenor voice floated as he painted landscapes with his words. With expectations for commercial success virtually guaranteed, Rodriguez came out with his first album. It was lauded by critics. But, the listening public ignored it. Rodriguez’s first album was a recording failure.

Not ready to concede that they’d made a mistake, the recording execs sent Rodriguez back into the studio. Again he delivered a masterful, critically acclaimed album. And again, the listening public didn’t buy.

Rodriguez was cut loose. There were no more albums, no more studio work, no more anticipation that Dylan part two had arrived. He returned to his simple home in Detroit, an apt place for failed dreams, and began to live his life.

Life, as is the case more often than not, was not easy for Rodriguez. Detroit was dying and with it most jobs. He became a day laborer, working long hours at physical labor in less than ideal conditions. He somehow managed to raise three children and earn a college degree in philosophy. His music? It was still there. People would see a man walking around the decaying neighborhoods of Detroit. The man had a guitar on his back. “He looked almost like one of the homeless people meandering along the streets,” residents would remark.

Life isn’t easy. And years pass. And strange twists of fate occur. Rodriguez led his life the best he could. He struggled financially, but as he would say, “There’s no shame in being poor. There’s no shame in physical labor.” And half a world away, in the Republic of South Africa, the country was reeling under the strain of its Apartheid system. For young whites, many of them liberal and sympathetic to the plight of their nation’s black majority, Rodriguez’s music became their life blood. In South Africa, he was Elvis in almost any record store in any white shopping area you could be heard playing “I wonder,” or “Sugar Man,” or a dozen of his other tracks.

And then the rumors began rumors that Rodriguez had killed himself – self-immolation – in an artistic-political statement about the conditions of the world. A few fans wanted proof. They searched his song lyrics to find the place Rodriguez would call home and they found him alive and well in Michigan, and oblivious to his South African fame.

In 1998 Rodriguez flew to South Africa to perform a series of concerts. He was feted like the Beatles coming to America. He sang and took in the cheers of the crowd. When the tour was over he returned to Michigan. There was no renaissance interest in his music; there was no money for all the records he sold overseas. There was just the life he’d always lived.

 Things would have stayed that way if his path hadn’t crossed a young European film-maker who was looking for a story. It took years to make “Sugar Man.” The money to make the film ran out. The young film maker was on the brink of financial ruin. He submitted his still unfinished film to Sundance and a miracle happened. Rodriguez, it seemed, was the perfect story. Rodriguez, it seemed, was a voice for a time and a people. Forty years after he was first set to enter the music scene, Rodriguez was in demand.

Twists of fate. Luck. So many words are used when hindsight tries to grasp and make sense of the why. Why now, we ask? Why not back then.

There was a boy, seventeen, and in his dreams he did great things. His dreams angered his brothers who plotted his death. But for a simple twist of fate he was spared. And for thirteen years he survived servitude and imprisonment. He was wrongly accused, forgotten by those he helped, and left for dead by his family. And in another twist of fate, with a nation’s survival hanging in the balance, he was there to save a people from starvation. It’s the Genesis story of Joseph and it should remind us that no dream is ever completely gone. God’s ways are not our ways. And sometimes forty years have to pass before the dreams come to fruition. Was it too long to wait? Not by the smile on Rodriguez’s face or the joy in the hearts of people hearing him sing.

Funding Cuts, Falsehood, & the "Stan the Man" Effect

I’ve had a lot on my mind the past week or so.  Sometimes, your worst enemy in here is your mind.  You find yourself thinking way too much about things you can’t control.  I heard a preacher recently say that you can’t control what others do, you can only control your response.  There’s a great deal of truth in those words.

Shortly before our college graduation, DOC informed the school that grant money earmarked for inmate higher education would no longer be available due to “budget constraints”.  Did DOC Director Clarke tell our graduates that when he showed up at the ceremony to tout his – and the Governor’s – support for education and credit the graduate’s successes as part and parcel of the administration’s re-entry program?  Of course not.  It was up to us to break the news to guys who already lack trust in the system.

So, I lie.  I tell them people really do care.  “You matter.  You getting an education, going out there and raising your kids, being a good father, husband and taxpayer, that’s what everyone wants.”  I used to believe that.  Now, I think “they” like sending guys to prison.  After all, 13,000 state jobs rely on having full to capacity prisons.  And companies that sign exorbitant contracts with the states to provide “prison services” make great profits for their shareholders and they pay huge contributions to politicians’ campaign funds.  It’s a vicious cycle of money, ignorance, and crime and I’m beginning to realize it’s more powerful than mercy, common sense and real justice.

Falsehood.  I heard a former NFL coach make the following statement as the news about Lance Armstrong, or Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o, or some other athlete broke.  He uttered the old adage, “The truth will set you free.”  “We all mess up; some worse than others; but the lie, the lie does you in.”  He’s right, so very right.

I know in my own situation I lived a lie rather than face the fears – the truths really I knew deep down about myself and my relationships.  And, the lies caught up to me.  So I came clean, landed in a place I abhor, but now sleep soundly at night.

The funny thing is, I see guys all around me pretending to be something they aren’t  Every small drug dealer wants me to think they’re Tony Montana (a/k/a “Scarface”) or Pablo Escobar; every two-bit thief wants me to believe they stole the Hope Diamond. They can’t admit they can’t read, can’t admit they had nothing.  They lie, and they keep on lying, and they stay imprisoned forever. 

I’m not a schadenfreude guy anymore.  I don’t relish another’s short comings.  I felt for Lance Armstrong.  And, I see and understand a lot more about the folks “outside”.  They really aren’t that different from the guys in here.  We all keep secrets, things that would embarrass us if they got out.  The truth is, they have nothing to do with who we really are.

It struck me in an ironic way, all these celebrities and athletes with their mea culpas, and the lies the government peddles about prisons, and crime and punishment, and then I hear Stan “the Man” Musial died. Stan is a Baseball Hall of Famer.  Twenty-two seasons with the Cardinals.  One of the greatest players ever and yet, because he played in St. Louis instead of New York, he never got the notoriety he deserved.

But that was OK with Stan.  He loved his wife of seventy-one years; he loved his family, St. Louis, and baseball.  By all accounts, he was one of the most decent men you could ever meet.

He passed away at age ninety-two, a year after his wife.  A few years ago, a baseball writer asked him to tell his secret for baseball longevity and success.  He said he jogged one mile every day.  He occasionally smoked cigars so he didn’t have to inhale.  And with a twinkle in his eye added, “And it didn’t hurt to hit above 300 all those years.”

I love that.  Two out of three times he came up, he never reached base.  But, he stayed the same – consistent, decent, hardworking.  There’d be less need for prisons, less public embarrassments, if more of us emulated Stan Musial.  And, I think Mr. Musial would tell you not to be like him.  Be yourself.  Be honest, and kind, and try even when you make an out.

I started this blog bemoaning Virginia’s short-sighted approach to educating the incarcerated.  I was ticked off and discouraged.  But, thinking about Stan Musial’s advice, I know these guys will get another time at bat.  And, they’re due for a hit.

 

Missing the Message

The nation celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day the other day.  In a strange twist, it fell on the same day that the nation’s first Black President celebrated his inauguration and the beginning of his second term.  Living in a place with such a large percentage of Black men you would assume the day resonates with them.  Unfortunately, there is a great deal of ambivalence among the young, incarcerated Black men in here.  And in the white ranks, it borders on contempt.  Much of it arises from ignorance, from missing the message.

There is an old political story from the days of Ronald Reagan’s election.  A well-off Park Avenue liberal was bemoaning to her friends that Reagan won a landslide reelection.  “I don’t know how”, she said.  “I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”  And so it goes for most of the young Black men I know in here.

“I don’t know anyone who respects King,” said Will, a normally very bright studious twenty-eight year old.  “He sold out.  He isn’t a leader of our community.”  As he spoke, three or four other equally young bright Black men nodded in agreement.  “White people like King.”  I could only smile.

I then pointed out that according to surveys among Black Americans; Dr. King is the single most revered figure in American history.  No other person even comes close.  Whites, on the other hand, hold mixed feelings, partly out of the battle over enshrining his birthday as a national holiday and partially over the ugly strains of prejudice that somehow continue to lie just below the surface.

“How can that be?”  My young friend asked.  I don’t know anyone who likes him.  I thought of the wealthy liberal in New York who couldn’t grasp that her view wasn’t the norm.  And I wondered how so many could miss the true meaning of Dr. King’s words, how so many miss the message.

Imagine a young Black man who graduates college in his teens.  He comes from an educated family of ministers in the segregated South.   He heads to Boston to begin graduate studies in Theology, and he discovers the words and works of a half-naked Indian lawyer named Gandhi.  King reads Gandhi’s words and sees in Gandhi’s message of peaceful, nonviolent protest the Christian response to oppression. 

All during his time in Boston King honed his message of using a nonviolent response to evil.  At age twenty-six, King earned his PhD.  He and his young bride accepted a call to a church in Montgomery, Alabama.  It is difficult to imagine America, the South, back in the 1950’s.  Most of the young men in here are quick to use the term “Jim Crow”, but they know nothing of it.  Theirs is a world of Rap singers being number one on the charts, of interracial couples, of a Black President winning a second term.  They know nothing of “colored only” bathrooms and water fountains.  They can’t fathom that you could be arrested for sitting at a lunch counter in a public restaurant or refusing to give up your seat to a white person on a public bus.

This was the world Martin and Coretta King ventured into in Montgomery, a world of separate but woefully unequal.  King preached nonviolence, and forgiveness, and mercy while his flock was regularly embarrassed, humiliated, or worse by their white counterparts.  It didn’t take long for King to find an issue to rally the Black community.

It came in the package of a petite, quiet Black woman who refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery public bus to a White passenger.  When asked year’s later why she subjected herself to arrest and death threats, Rosa Parks simply replied, “I was tired.”

“I was tired.”  Tired of indignity, and disrespect, and disobedience to the laws of her God, that all men and women are God’s precious children.  In those three words the Civil Rights movement found their direction and Dr. King became the movement’s Moses.

Dr. King led marches and boycotts and protests – always nonviolent protests – to challenge the conscience of a nation.  So often he and his followers were met with arrest and violence, horrible violence.

“You must love your enemy,” he would tell anyone who would listen.  Loving your enemy, seeing the Godliness in the most evil of men, is usually easier then liking your enemy.  It’s tough, he would say, to like someone who is beating you, or opening up a high-powered fire hose on you, or lynching you.  “Love your enemy.  Do not return his evil with evil.”

No American orator or writer captured the affirmative duty of a man of faith to nonviolently challenge evil – even to the point of death – as Dr. King did.  His “Letter from Birmingham Jail” stands as one of the great written statements of Christian faith in action.  His, “I Have A Dream” speech eloquently captures the Biblical dream of America as a land where all God’s children are truly free. 

Freedom.   I watch these young, Black men miss the poetic beauty of freedom.  Freedom isn’t about purchasing power or the ability to say and do whatever you want.  Freedom is a peace that is given by the Almighty that no tyrant, no nation, can suppress.  Dietrich Bonheoffer knew real freedom even as the Nazis hung a noose around his neck.  Martin Luther King knew freedom even as he understood his life would be cut short.

“You have to fight back.”  “We need to live separately.”  Over and over I hear these young men utter the same words Dr. King faced from his own community.  Violence, he knew was never the answer.  We are called to be better, to be merciful even when confronted by evil.

And Dr. King provoked anger.  He condemned America’s involvement in Vietnam.  War is never the answer he courageously argued.  Inmates who are confronted each day by violence and “might makes right” just shake their heads in bemused wonder.  “He was so foolish”, they’ll say, and I can’t help but think he was the wisest man alive during my lifetime, a man whose vision of America and the world was so much closer to God’s view than most of our national leaders.

This is not to say he was without faults.  King, like all men and women, had foibles and sins and failures.  But the mark of a man is how he behaves in the worst of circumstances.  In that, King proved himself heroic.

So it was with this year’s MLK Day.  They showed a documentary on his life, his legacy on our internal movie channel.  I noticed many TV sets turned to his story.  A few of the guys came by afterward.  “Did you know all that?” they asked.  I did.  And I gave out my dog eared copy of King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, so a few could read it and understand the message.  It’s always been about the message.