December 17, 2015 - 22:30
A vivid experience:
On the last Thursday, the guards were especially thorough as we made our way through metal detectors and pat downs. They paused at one student and asked if she was wearing a bra.
"No," she answered uncomfortably.
"Can you put one on?"
"I don't have one."
"We have rules here. You all have been here before, right? …. Even though they [the inmates] are females, they are still predators."
I was so angry. But you can't be angry there. Sometimes I pretend I don't hear, just so I can focus on the lesson and be happy for class. I smile and smirk and perk up for class. We don't want to lose our opportunity to come here. I was angry but not in the way I wanted to be. Polite Anger, as Jody would call it. I needed to write something down so I could focus for our lesson. I have copied it below with some small edits. (I also added it to the website) The blue text was added as I was reading and reflecting on what I wrote.
I'm so angry at this system. The guards are the violators, the predators. They touch me. They stare at me. The “inmates” don't do that here in this class. I feel safe in this room. I have the privilege to feel safe. I feel guilty and uncomfortable in that lobby even though I haven't done anything wrong. And yet no one is innocent. Am I any less a criminal than those in blue shirts? It is the way the guards stare that makes me feel unsafe, scared. I feel the need to cry but the tears don't come. I'm here as an "innocent" visitor for no more than two hours a week. How do they do this all day every day for weeks, months, years? No one deserves this. No one deserves to feel so powerless and small. This isn't the way to repair, recover, change, hold accountable.
How do I “make sense” of this experience? The emotions are so overwhelming. In some ways it seems fake or forced to try to connect this to what we have done in class. As I contemplate, though, some texts begin to jump out at me--Jones, Rich, Balaev, Gossett. I am thinking about how this experience illustrates the damage-based perspective the guards have of the inmates. The label, “predator,” is ascribed to the inmates even though the reality is that the prison itself is the predator. Viewing prisoners as criminals and predators justifies the dehumanization that goes on inside. But the true blame lies in the system itself. Like Dean Spade says, “the prison is the serial killer. The prison is the serial rapist… . If we really want to reduce rape and reduce early death, we would get rid of the prison.” It is the violence of the state that is harming the most people and the guns in state hands that are killing the most people. But these deaths are “justified,” because the people who are harmed are “disposable.” This experience further cements my belief in abolitionism. I find it impossible to imagine a prison that does more good than harm. Abolitionism is about preventing and reducing harm. The prison system perpetuates cycles of violence and harm, answering violence and harm with violence and harm.
The prison system today that treats people as disposable and does not value human life goes against what I was taught about crime and justice. I was taught that there is not a dichotomy of good people and bad people. My dad, a Rabbi, would talk about the good and evil inclinations within all people and my mom, also a Rabbi, would write sermons about the spark of God, the still small voice within all people. I grew up believing that we are made in the image of God, betzelem elohim, that we should not rejoice in the deaths of our enemies and that all human life is valuable. I grew up challenging the punitive corporal punishments that are written in the Torah: “we live in a different time now where we do not stone rebellious children,” my dad would say. And I grew up observing the Jewish Holy Day of Yom Kippur, taking moments to repent for my mistakes and wrongdoings and transgressions--moments of hamartia, which in Greek literally means missing the mark or the bullseye. “Sin” was not original or innate or confined to certain kinds of people. We all make mistakes and we tend to reach for good, though sometimes we miss the mark.
I think back to the podcast Joel recommended to me about repentance and Yom Kippur. In the episode, Krista Tippet interviews Dr. Louis Newman as they discuss accountability and wrongdoing:
Dr. Newman: We should always look for the good in others. And that in fact, even in a person who's virtually completely sinful, he[Rabbi Nachman of Breslav, a famous Jewish Hasidic teacher] says you should find the very smallest bit of goodness in them. And on that account, you should judge them for their merits. And when you do that, he says — even for the person who's most sinful — when you see their goodness, you help them repent.
Ms. Tippett: That's such a different impulse than we have culturally. I think you say somewhere that we bounce back and forth between a pervasive failure to hold people accountable and an equally powerful obsession with doing so.
Dr. Newman: That's right. That's right. I think that our culture has actually sort of — got this all wrong, mostly. In the sense that there's this funny way in which I think repentance is exactly in the middle. It insists that you be held fully accountable and it insists simultaneously that there's a way back.
I included this excerpt on my homepage of our website, because it speaks to the way our society and the prison system dehumanizes others, rather than see “the good” in them. And it reflects the abolitionist mindset--that our “justice” system fails “to hold people accountable” and at the same time obsessively places the blame on others. We have “got this all wrong” and must create a new system, perhaps based on repentance, that “insists that you be held fully accountable and it insists simultaneously that there's a way back.”
I feel that in some ways I have only experienced one side of the system. I wouldn’t necessarily know how to argue for abolitionism and I might be easily swayed by other voices and experiences. I still struggle with envisioning abolitionism, but I think I am supposed to. In addition to bringing me back to my belief in abolitionism, this experience also brings me back to our discussions about the tensions between abolition and reform. Is our going inside complicity in the system? When we make choices about saying and not saying, when we hold onto that polite anger, are we perpetuating the prison system? Gossett talks about how we need to balance present needs and future hopes. And the people who are most affected should have the most influence over the decisions. There is more than one answer to these questions and more than just a dichotomy of abolition vs. reform.
Joel challenged me to imagine more. Then, when I was watching a TV show that placed characters in two-option dilemmas, I wanted to scream to them to be creative and think of another way. There has to be another way, there has to be a choice better than a choice between two evils. Mia Mingus reminds me to think of the world I want to create. I want to learn more and imagine more what a justice system without prisons would look like. And I want to practice abolition every day by turning my anger into action and fighting to empower myself and others. Political anger > polite anger.
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Show me the prison, show me the jail
Show me the prisoner, whose life has gone stale
And I'll show you a young man
With so many reasons why
And there but for fortune, go you or I mmm
Show me the alley, show me the train
Show me the hobo, who sleeps out in the rain
And I'll show you a young man
With so many reasons why
And there but for fortune ,go you or I, mmm
Show me the whiskey, that stains on the floor
Show me the drunkard, as he stumbles out the door
And I'll show you a young man
With so many reasons why
And there but for fortune go you or I, mmm
Show me the country, where the bombs had to fall
Show me the ruins of the buildings, once so tall
And I'll show you a young man
With so many reasons why
And there but for fortune go you and I, you and I
--Phil Ochs