Polarization

Typically in polarized issues we think of it as sort of either or.  It is a or b, black or white, good or bad.   We do not as often think of the polls as falling on a spectrum, and we definitely don’t think of a spectrum as curving the point where the far ends might meet up (An example of this being if you put American politics on a circle the far left anarchist and the far right libertarians begin to meet up.)

It is painfully apparent that the US is extremely polarized right now on almost every issue and politics have become so divisive again (I say again because it is actually not the first time – remember families divided by the civil war? or not speaking to each other in the 70’s over hot button issues?) that once again there are families that cannot sit down to a civil Thanksgiving and where people I know are disowning family members.   I hear much despair both about how these gulfs will be bridged in families but also about how our country will be governable again.

Ironically, at the same time my Meeting has also become very polarized – but over a very different issue.   A registered Sex Offender has come to our Meeting and there was been far-ranging response to his presence in Meeting as well as far ranging interpretations of his behavior while in Meeting.  The Meeting initially came up with a policy regarding sex offenders and then after an incident where it became very clear that vagueness in the policy resulted in widely varying interpretation of whether the policy was violated or not, the Meeting has set out to rewrite the policy.  Sadly, the Meeting has also become very polarized in the process.

One Friend has helpfully asked us to think of this polarization as not whether x did Y or whether Z has unfairly accused x of something, but rather as that all of us in Meeting fall at different places on a spectrum that at one end values welcoming people, anyone, especially those who maybe underdogs in our society into the Meeting, and the other end of the spectrum those valuing safety for all the members of our Meeting and holding up the Meeting Community as of supreme importance.   This same member has then invited us in a series of conversations to notice the things we actually believe in common – which winds up being that:

* we would all like to feel safe

*that we believe in the redemptability of our fellow human

*we all want to be welcoming to other humans

*the world holds no guarantees anywhere about safety

*we believe in taking sensible precautions to reduce risk when we can, etc.  

By finding these initial values we agree upon we are slowly inching our way forward.

Like most Friends in the Meeting I was so dismayed that we were having this conflict and also that it was having the destructive power that it was having in the Meeting. I wondered how this could possibly come out right?   But also being new to the Meeting it was very clear to me that the conflict like some sort of bull dozer was pushing up to the light of day all the dark places, all the dysfunctioning and broken places in the Meeting.   And it becomes increasingly clear that there is no way through this conflict without fixing all the broken places….which if we fail will leave us shattered and if we succeed will make us stronger and vastly better as a community.

Recently George Lakey came to town giving a workshop on his new book: How We Win.  One of the very encouraging things George shared was how in his research for his previous book Viking Economics he discovered that the Scandinavian countries, now amazing models for the world in so many arenas, were a “mess” before they transformed into democratic socialist countries.  He discovered that they were at their most polarized point right before that change in governments.  Out of the polarization the common people kicked the 1% out of rulership.  He then looked at our own US history and realized that out of the polarization and class divide of the Great Depression came all of the reforms of the New Deal and out of the polarization of the 60’s and 70’s came the civil rights movement, the Clean Water and Clean air act, etc.   In listening to a friend of his who did beautiful metal work he heard his friend talking about having to heat up the metal to make it pliable and George realized that this is what polarization does – it heats things up till they become changeable. George asks us to see the polarization of our time as an amazing set of possibilities about to unfold.

I have believed about the Meeting conflict that if we succeed that we may find some answers that our society has yet to find about how we allow people who have committed crimes against society to be welcomed back into society and integrated back in.   But this week I had the even more radical thought that the nations polarity on immigration goes on the same poll between those who want to be welcoming to all and those that want our country tot be a “safe place” that provides for those already here.  I realized that if the Meeting succeeds maybe we will find some answers on how the heat of conflict and the longing to be community allows for the transformation of our broken US society.   Maybe it will equip some of us with some ways to approach the yawning US political divide which I think begins with finding where we hold common values even when our rhetoric and preferred policies are worlds apart. 

It is also very helpful to remember that God exists at all points of our poll.  The Creator is not just hanging out on one side of that poll.  So if God is in all part of the poll, the Divine is able to hold the tension of those conflicting points of views and to keep seeing as loveable all members of the conflict.

Black and White Justice (and color of all kind)

What is your personal experience with the criminal justice system?

This was the worship sharing question.  My Meeting is small and there were not a lot of us there.  Everyone sitting in the circle was white. I knew that of the people in the room that I had by far the most personal experience with the criminal justice system.

My experience has many levels and spans 4 states: as a volunteer, as a visitor, an observer of post prison inmate experience, and my own experience as an activist with arrest, detention and courts.  I started at age 20 in college going into the local prison as a volunteer...why?  Because my peer group were all being required to register for the draft for the first time in 11 years and they were taking a stand and saying no, the result of which was that some of them were going to go to prison (and did).  I wanted therefore to understand what prison is. 

Volunteering to be inside:

I was an Alternatives to Violence Project facilitator over a 10 year period of time. 

After my experience as a volunteer in the IN prisons, in Missouri I learned AVP which I did for a year before moving to WA and starting the WA state AVP.  At points I was going in once a month for 3 days straight.  I would spend beautiful summer, spring and fall days in windowless rooms.   I knew men guilty of all variety of crimes and I learned the culture of prison.   I spent hours and hours listening to men describe their experience inside, both beautiful and horrible.  I never asked anybody why they were locked up because it is considered impolite, but often they would tell me, sometimes in great detail.  I knew people doing "short" sentences of a few years, and men doing "life" anything over 13, and I still know men inside who are doing life without the possibility of parole. Vastly disproportionately the men doing life without were Black men.   I listened to men talk about how they did time, how they coped.  I listened to men describe lifestyles so hard on the outside that they said they were grateful they had come to prison because it had saved their life.   And I listened to men hate the place they lived and everyone they could never, never get away from.  I challenged myself to find that of God in each of them and I did.  I made friends and I loved men I knew inside those walls.

Long before there was a book called No New Jim Crow I understood that prisons were a way to both separate men of color from the rest of culture and also permanently bar them from equal opportunities.  It took only one look around any prison room to see that.   In the very white state of WA when the majority of prisoners are people of color the evidence of discrimination is blatantly obvious.  I listened to many men tell me about public defenders so overloaded, incompetent or indifferent that their lawyers seemed unaware of basic facts of their case or in some case even of their names.

I met guards who seemed far more cruel and heartless than the "criminals" they were watching and I also met guards well liked by the prisoners who managed to be kind to everyone.  Mainly I saw the incredible boredom of the guards and understood why the prisoners would say "they are doing time too without doing the crime."  It also became clear to me how the power tripping and cruelty were simply how some of them entertained themselves or felt important in the very small pond that was their world.  Not dissimilar to the power struggles that went on among the prisoners.

As the administrator of our program, I also spent a lot of time talking to the prison administration and dealing with rules and attempts to get reasonable accommodations for the program.  I eventually lobbied the legislature to try to change some of the most egregious things about the prison system.  I learned to not try to meet the rules of the prison with logic because they were not based upon logic but upon layers of history, egos, and power tripping - they were arbitrary and inconsistent and sanity was only to be had when you could accept that.

Visiting injustice

I eventually stopped being a volunteer and became a visitor and then endured the even more disrespectful ways the friends and family of prisoners would be treated. Metal detectors and pat searches and time wasted waiting because they had not even called the person you went to visit.  The covert message always being there must be something very wrong with you and worthy only of contempt if you cared about someone in prison.  The truth frequently being communicated that they had all the power and you had none and don't forget it.

The Post Prison “set up”

I also watched many, many men I knew come out...and 90% of the time fail.   They failed because they were set up.   The ones who had done the longest had been deprived for so long of the ability to make even the simplest of choices: what they would eat, or when they would sleep, or what products they would want to use....that having to decide all these things on the outside was overwhelming.  Street culture is so different than prison culture that they were lost.  In addition, after years of being penalized if they objected or asserted themselves, they struggled in society to have a voice, to set boundaries or to ask for things.   Those who came out without family were really sunk - released with only some clothes, no job, and money in a check form (but no id and thus no easy way to cash their check) they were easily ready to become homeless or steal something.   After years of not having consistent access to drugs and alcohol and now maximally stressed, many would very quickly be back to addictions within weeks or months.

Activism and arrest and trial

And all of the above...this does not begin to address my own receiving end of the criminal justice system.  As a political activist I have twice committed civil disobedience, so I have twice gotten arrested, been handcuffed and taken down to the station and on one occasion stayed refusing to give my name in solidarity with others in my group not giving their name.   So I have spent time both before and after sentencing in jail.   I have been to court for both arraignment, trial and sentencing.  Having spent so much time with people who desperately tried not to get arrested I am painfully aware of the privilege involved in choosing to risk arrest.  I also am supremely annoyed by activists who spend some hours or days in jail (jail being completely different from prison) and then think they know about incarceration.  I would like to say clearly that what I know about imprisonment is lightly impressed by my personal experience and heavily influenced by the sharing of literally hundreds of inmates.   And listening to something is not the same as living something.

Courts and the criminal injustice system 

I have been in more courtrooms than I can now count for trials of fellow activists - some of whom were facing decade long sentences for Plowshares actions ("We shall beat our swords into plowshares" the inspiration for personal acts of disarmament against nuclear weapons in the 80's)  and more recently for trials of activists acting against our fossil fuel system.   

In these disgraceful experiences I have learned that in some ritual of authority all must rise for the judge or risk contempt charges or being barred from the room.  I have learned that the judge can limit what evidence and lines of defense people are allowed to offer to the point of preventing their defense.  I learned that jury instructions can be given in such a way that the jury is virtually told they must ignore their conscience and only interpret the law as the judge interprets the law to them - essentially saying that they must find them guilty.   I have watched juries come to quick decisions so they can home that night.  I have watched jurors be selected and dismissed on the basis of their believing anything that might bring actual justice to bare.  (ie anyone who does not believe in the death penalty is dismissed from capitol cases.)  In short I have learned that there is not much justice in our criminal "justice system."

The Color Gap

So my experience is with jails, with prisons, with courtrooms, with arrests, with police who were arresting people around me, with guards, with prison administrators, prison rules, parole boards, etc.  I want to be very, very clear.  That is a lot of experience for a white person – but it is only a glimpse of what people of color go through.  I chose my experience which is in itself an act of privilege.  I don’t have to fear that for a broken tail light I will have an interface with the criminal justice system that could become deadly.  I observed people of color being treated differently by cops and guards, but I did not have that experience.   And the only reason why my story is worth telling is for what I next have to say.

With all of the experience I have listed imagine the jolt to my system to hear my fellow Friends around the circle say, sometimes apologetically, that their only experience with the criminal justice system was with being stopped (treated respectfully and then let go) by a police officer.  These are all Friends who I love and have good, good hearts....and suddenly in one shattering moment I understood how really wide the divide actually is between white people and people of color in this country.   For all the things I have written about above...are the common experience of people of color.   It is hard because of the discriminatory arrest, prosecution and imprisonment practices in the US for there to be a person of color who does not have a family member, friend or self who has not had the experiences I describe above.   The fact that white people on the other hand can live their whole lives without having experiences with the criminal justice system and generally not know anyone either who has had a personal experience...that is a cavernous gap which separates us.

I am still trying to wrap my head around how that gap can be bridged.  It is not going to be tours of jail ...that just does not begin to be three dimensional.   Frankly, it takes time genuinely spent, and sadly I don't think most white people I know would see the benefit of spending that time.  And so, we sit in camps with life experiences so different that we don't even begin to comprehend how different the experiences actually are.