THERE ARE NO SECRETS IN THIS PLACE

Posted on July 27, 2014 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Officer Kirsch, or Officer K, as he was called, had once told Norman that there were no secrets in the maximum security prison. That was putting the matter nicely, Norman had thought. There were rats in every crevice in the prison and seemingly nothing went unreported. “There are no secrets in this place,” Officer K had said proudly, with conviction.

Norman was working in the prison’s Sign Shop, which made the street signs and license plates for the State. He was in the basement packing defective signs when he stumbled upon the tunnel. It was behind an old furnace that had obviously been forgotten. This wasn’t surprising. The prison was old. It looked like a medieval castle. Not surprisingly, there were long forgotten tunnels under it. Few prisoners had access to the basement. The Sign Shop was one of the few areas in the prison where the basement was utilized and thus provided access to prisoners, although this access was minimized and generally supervised.

Office K was the Sign Shop’s supervisor. It was ironic that he had told Norman that there were no secrets, because the guard himself couldn’t hold water. He had told Norman his wife’s name, as well as his children’s. He had even shown Norman pictures of the family. The wife was pretty in an incestuous way. Officer K had shown Norman his vacation pictures, the wife and kids on the beach in bathing suits. The kids were cute little devils, took after their mother.

In a way, Norman felt responsible for the family, like he was the breadwinner, since his imprisonment provided Officer K with the wherewithal to provide for his family. Norman didn’t know how to interpret this shared intimacy with his keeper. At first he had thought that Officer K was maliciously showing him what he was missing, but the guard genuinely liked him and wanted to share this happy moment in his life with him for, after all, Norman was as close to a fellow employee as Officer K had. He often praised Norman as a good worker. Norman didn’t cause any problems. Officer K had a great deal of trust in him. Norman, however, betrayed this trust. Whenever he masturbated he conjured up images of Officer K’s wife in the bathing suit and called out her name.

It had taken Norman three years to gain Office K’s trust. It was a whole year before he had left Norman in the basement alone, and even then he would sporadically check. Only in the third year did Officer K cease checking on Norman altogether. Thus he began his journey into the tunnel. It was a veritable maze. It crisscrossed under the prison, leading to the cell blocks and other points of the prison. One path led to the front of the prison. Behind sturdy bars Norman had looked up at the parking lot. On that occasion a woman, her heels clacking against the pavement, had walked past. Norman lustily watched her shapely legs. He had wished he could see her face. He wondered if she was Officer K’s wife, since she worked at the prison too, as many of the guards’ wives and girlfriends did.

When Norman first discovered the tunnel he was like a kid exploring. The con in him though hoped that one of the paths would lead out of the prison. He had vowed to search every nook and cranny of the tunnel to see if there was a way out. Some days he got frustrated, going around in circles, but he had vowed not to leave one stone unturned. Every workday if he was able to go down to the basement, he was in the tunnel searching. One day his persistence paid off. He saw the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. He followed it. He had to restrain himself from shouting “Eureka!” He wasn’t long for this world. He would leave as soon as possible. It would just be his luck that after more than one hundred years the guards would rediscover his entrance to the tunnel. Their aptitude for serendipity was amazing, and frightening. If they stumbled upon this tunnel it’d be after he had left. He would make his preparations and leave in a week.

That week passed agonizingly slowly. Norman was on edge. At night he couldn’t even masturbate to the image of Officer K’s wife in her bathing suit.

The day before Norman was going to leave there was a flood in the mess hall. Norman learned about the deluge and thought it was an omen. A guard had journeyed into the basement to check on the flooding. It wasn’t too bad. He wouldn’t even have to assign any prisoners to mop it up. It was awfully musty in the basement and he didn’t relish having to oversee the operation if he reported that work had to be done. He was off the following day. If any work needs to be done, he thought, my relief can do it. It was too God-awful smelly down there.

The guard had returned to the mess hall and reported that the flooding in the basement was minimal.  No prisoners were assigned to mop up.

The day Norman was going to leave finally arrived. This was the first time in prison he had actually looked forward to going to work. It would be his last day. He would leave as soon as he could, get as great a start as he could before the authorities realized that he was missing.

In the basement Norman squeezed behind the furnace and entered the tunnel through the hitherto long forgotten entrance.

He ran toward the proverbial light. As he got closer the light became brighter. It was blinding. He put his arm in front of his eyes. He stumbled and fell. He kept falling. There seemed to be no end to his falling. He finally hit the ground after what seemed an eternity. His head was aching from the brilliance of the light. He picked himself up and looked around. The light was still blinding. And it was hot. God it was hot! And what was that sound? It sounded like a waterfall. What was that? He almost stopped breathing. He listened. Someone was approaching.

He heard the steady tread of feet. He looked around him for a place to hide, but there was no hiding place. He looked up. The first thing he saw emerging from the light was the shoes. They were black and polished to a spit shine, exactly like the fanatical go-by-the-book guards polished their shoes. From the shoes he looked up. Razor sharp creases in navy blue pants. A sky blue shirt. Shit, a guard! Where was he? He looked at the face. He had never seen this guard. He was an albino, with woolly hair.

“Where am I?” Norman muttered.

“Hell,” the albino said.

Had he said “hello?” “What did you say?”

“Hell,” he enunciated clearly.

“I’ve always thought of prison as hell,” Norman said out loud but though he had said such to himself.

“No, you’re actually in hell.”

“I can’t believe this!”

“You mean to tell me you’re a…fallen angel?”

“Far from that!”

“So you belong here! Rarely do we get someone who doesn’t belong here.”

“I just thought I’d escaped!” Norman thought he said to himself.

“You did.”

“From one hell to another?”

“If you want to look at it that way.  Hell has been given a bad name by all of your poets. I like to think of it as paradise lost.”

“How did I get here?”

“You followed the yellow brick road!” He chuckles. “How in hell do you think you got here? Didn’t you know that prisons are built right over hell?”

“I must be dreaming.”

“Life is a dream. This is better than life itself! You’ll like it here. A lot of interesting people, especially the advocates.”

 “Devil’s advocates?”

“No, lawyers. We hold mock trials down here.”

“So nothing’s changed?”

“On the contrary, a lot has changed. Down here the acquittal rate is well over ninety percent.”

“What?”

“Down here we are honest.”

“I never met an honest lawyer!”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything. Would you like me to show you around?”

“An orientation?”

“Call it whatever you like. You can wander around if you desire.”

“Really?”

“Be my guest.”

“Am I?”

“Are you what?”

“A guest?”

“No, you’re here for eternity.”

“So I traded in one life sentence for another?”

“This is nothing like where you’ve come from!”

“What’s the difference?”

“In this world there are no restraints. You can do whatever you want. That’s why I like to think of my abode as paradise lost.”

“I can do anything I want?”

“Without fear or reprisal. As long as you can live with yourself afterwards.

“Are you serious?”

“Follow me.”

Norman follows the albino dressed like a guard. Men in three-piece suits, the advocates, wave to the albino as he takes Norman on the grand tour of hell. In a corner a dirty child is gnawing on a rat. Norman averts his eyes.

“Come now,” the albino says, “hell isn’t for the squeamish.”

They walk for about a mile. For Norman the tour is surrealistic. He keeps thinking that it’s nothing but a dream. However, certain scenes are realistic and reminiscent of the streets. There are bands of youth roaming the streets of hell; there are homeless people; there are unspeakable crimes being played out right before his eyes. The albino stops. “Look!” He expansively extends his arms. “All this is yours!”

Norman looks. Beautiful women in bikinis are on what is unmistakably a beach. For years he had only seen bikini-clad women on beaches in beer commercials!

“You can have any one of them,” the albino continues.

“Are they prostitutes?”

“No, they’re ordinary women who’ve found their way to hell. Many women are fascinated with evil, with evil men. Pick the one you want, follow her and take her.”

“Rape her?”

“Take her, rape her. I don’t care what you call it. Here nothing is forbidden!”

“But I never raped a woman!”

“There’s a first time for everything!”

“But I never –“

“Oh shut up! You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, but anything you want to do you can. By God! you’re the most squeamish person we’ve had down here in quite some time. Normally, when people find out the true nature of hell they are ecstatic. They celebrate this new freedom with excess. ‘Indulge excessively’ becomes their motto!” Looking at his watch. “Well, you can make up your mind on your own time.  I have things to do!” He goose-steps away from Norman and into the bowels of hell.

Norman sat down on the sand and watched the women. He watched them for quite some time. Actually, he lost track of time. His mouth was watering and it wasn’t because he was watching a beer commercial. He had singled out a woman he would take or rape, whatever one preferred. He just knew that he had to have her. He was going to have her. She reminded him of someone. He couldn’t put his finger on whom. Maybe it was one of the women in the beer commercials. God, she was a pretty woman.

The pretty woman was leaving. Norman got up to follow. He couldn’t believe what he was going to do. He had always despised rapists. In his ignorance and arrogance he had believed that a real man could have any woman he wished if he was willing to take the time to woo her or whatever it took. Now, he was stalking a woman.

The woman turned slightly and he saw her in profile. That’s when it dawned on him who she reminded him of. Officer K’s wife. How could she be in hell? Was she attracted to evil men? Officer K, despite being a keeper, seemed to be a decent human being.

Before he knew what he was doing he called out her name. First softly, and then loudly.

“Katrina?”

She turned. There was no recognition in her eyes. Of course she didn’t know him. What did he expect? He approached her and she bolted. He chased her, his eyes on her fine long legs. She was fast as a filly. But he knew that she couldn’t outrun him. He would track her down. He was in very good shape. He kept a steady pace, slowly closing the gap between himself and his intended victim. It was just a matter of time before she fell from exhaustion. He wouldn’t pounce on her. He would enjoy her to the fullest. It had been a long time.

She finally collapsed after a number of miles. He stopped running and approached her. She was on her hands and knees gasping for air. He grabbed her by the hair and turned her face toward him.

“Please!” she gasped out, still trying to catch her breath.

Her helplessness was arousing him even more.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she managed to get out between breaths.

“What’s your name?”

“You called me by my name!”

“Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love your husband?”

“Of course.”

“Do you have any children?”

“Two.”

“Will he forgive you?”

“Please, you’re scaring me!” Her eyes pleaded with him.

“I won’t hurt you.”

She started to cry. He let go of her hair. He sat down next to her. Suddenly, she bolted again. He got a hand around her ankle and she fell. He fell on top of her.

 

 

Office K came upon Norman in the tunnel where he had fallen. He shook his head. He was disappointed. He radioed for assistance. Only then did he check on his prisoner. He was semiconscious, moaning something. Officer K leaned toward him. First it was a whisper. He wasn’t sure if he had heard correctly, but then Norman practically shouted it out.

Help finally arrived. The now unconscious Norman was taken to the hospital where he journeyed in and out of consciousness for a few weeks, replaying his descent to hell for the nurse and the guard that watched over him. During that time Office K came to the hospital often. He was waiting for Norman to regain consciousness. He wanted to tell him one thing.

After a little more than a month, Norman regained consciousness. The hospital was brightly lit. He put his arm up to shield his eyes. Peeking under his arm he saw a sky blue shirt. He looked up and saw the face he had dreaded to see.

“Good to have you back in this world,” Officer K said. “I just wanted to tell you one thing: there are no secrets in this place.” With that Officer K walked out the hospital.

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Parole, higher education, felony-murder and more

Posted on July 22, 2014 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

CPR has been in the forefront, advocating for fair parole practices in New York since it was founded in 1999.  Since then, other advocates and people who care about justice have looked at the issue of parole.  Right now, the Fair Parole Act is the major piece of proposed legislation to fundamentally change parole as we know it, creating a presumption in favor of release to parole supervision after the minimum period of imprisonment (MPI) has been served, based on good behavior, that is, a clean disciplinary record and rehabilitational accomplishments.  Indeed, Executive Law 259-i, which governs the parole decision-making process, implies this presumption in favor of parole after serving the MPI.  In fact, when Governor Carey signed the bill into law, what would become Executive Law 259, in his 1977 memorandum in support of the bill, he said as much.  Since then, parole has become a political football, with the Executive Law not only being sacked during the Pataki administration, but also subjected to numerous personal fouls.  Nevertheless, there seems to be a wind change, something in the air, an opportunity for more than simple reform, not only of parole, but of other criminal justice issues.

The state of parole is simply an indicator of a failing criminal justice system.  There are a number of other issues that have found their way on the criminal justice radar: felony-murder; raising the age of criminal responsibility from 16- to 18-years-old; people aging in prison; and higher education in prison.

Felony-murder is a strict liability crime, which holds nonkilling “codefendants” charged with various felonies with murder when one of their confederates kills during the course of one of those felonies.  The law proclaims that they are also guilty of murder, even if they were getaway drivers.  There are many theories that are actually no more than attempts at justifying why the law as it is, adopted by the United States from Great Britain during colonial days, which was abolished by that nation in 1957, should not be abolished.  Mostly the opposition is from District Attorneys who get a pass on proving each and every element of the crime, a Constitutional mandate, not to mention that there are degrees of guilt and/or responsibility, revolving around mens rea (“guilty mind”) and individual moral culpability.  The felony-murder rule has been called an “anachronism,” a holdover from the days when most felonies were punishable by death, and thus there was no reason to distinguish the punishment from one felony over another, since someone found guilty of robbery would be hung as well as someone found guilty of murder.

New York has the dubious distinction of being one of two states, the other being North Carolina, that charges children as adults, at age 16, not to mention the Juvenile Offender Law, which has harsher, that is, quasi-adult punishments, for 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds charged with certain crimes.  Both Governor Andrew Cuomo, and Kenneth Thompson, the new District Attorney of Kings County (Brooklyn), have publicly stated that we need to change the law that charges 16- and 17-year-olds as adults.

Another issue, a direct result of unfair, and some would argue illegal, parole practices, that is, repeated parole denials, is leading to people aging in prison.  There is a movement, RAPP (Release Aging People in Prison), which is addressing this.

Finally, but most importantly, is higher education in prison.  Governor Cuomo came out in support of bringing higher education back into prisons, publicly financing it, but quickly backtracked when there was push-back from Republicans.  Three such politicians, Republican Congressmen, Chris Collins of the 27th Congressional District, Tom Reed of the 23rd Congressional District, and Chris Gibson of the 19th Congressional District, opposing such, said we should support higher education for “kids before cons” and introduced the “Kids Before Cons Act,” which would ban states from using federal monies to fund college education for people in prison.  Despite the evidence that people in prison who availed themselves of higher education have dramatically lower recidivism rates than those who do not, certain politicians, those whose constituents directly benefit by mass incarceration and by extension high recidivism rates, seem to want to continue to pretend that being “tough on crime” trumps being “smart on crime.”  Note that these three Congressmen preside over 29 counties, with Collins and Reed sharing one, Ontario County, that are the home of 28 prisons.  Further, note that only 14 of these 29 counties have prisons, with four in Ulster County alone, part of the 19th Congressional District.  These politicians know the value of education.  Collins holds an MBA, Reed holds a J.D., and Gibson holds a Ph.D.  These are the same political districts, at least locally, that benefited from prison gerrymandering, that is, counting people from the five boroughs as residents of upstate counties for purposes of the Census, which made them eligible for entitlements disproportionate to their true numbers.

Governor Cuomo showed courage in closing prisons we no longer needed.  (Note that there was opposition from the same politicians whose constituents benefit from prisons in their backyards.)  He needs to muster that same courage and stand his ground on publicly financing higher education in prisons.

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Waiting for Parole — Between Hope and Despair

Posted on July 19, 2014 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

One of the most powerful forces is hope, oftentimes counterbalanced by despair.  In the criminal justice system, nothing inspires more hope than the possibility of being granted and being released to parole supervision.  On the other hand, nothing drops one so deeply into the depths of despair, having entertained that hope, than to be denied parole.

 Having worked with the Coalition for Parole Restoration (CPR) since its inception, about 15 years, a nonprofit whose mission is to resuscitate the parole system in New York, to ensure fair, “nonpolitical” parole interviews for everyone serving an indeterminate sentence in prison, especially “long-termers,”  and facilitating successful reentry.

Over the years I have met many remarkable people who have served and are serving long sentences in prison, mostly for murder which, when you don’t think about the television show Criminal Minds, is almost always a one-time crime, not to mention the fact that people convicted of murder, when released, have the lowest recidivism rate of all other people convicted of other crimes. 

Through CPR I have received numerous letters from people serving long sentences looking for support letters for their parole applications, and I have written many.  In these letters there is a common theme: young people, mostly teenagers when they committed crimes, have been in prison longer than they were free.  Granted, they have been convicted of one of the most serious crimes.  Nonetheless, having been sentenced to an indeterminate amount of time, e.g., 15 years to life, there is hope, and the possibility of parole.  In fact, indeterminate sentences are based on theories of rehabilitation, i.e., that the minimum period of imprisonment (MPI), in the example above, 15 years, would serve the legitimate penological goals of punishment: isolation, deterrence, retribution and rehabilitation.  In fact, in New York, there’s a tenuous presumption in favor of parole when the MPI has been served, if there is evidence of rehabilitation.  This all changed in 1995 when George Pataki became Governor of New York State.

Pataki ran on a campaign that he would restore the death penalty and eliminate parole.  None of this, however, could be done Ex Post Facto, that is, people already sentenced prior to these new laws being enacted could not be re-sentenced and sentenced to death and executed or denied parole.  The Solution – the “Pataki Rule”: parole commissioners given a directive by the Governor to deny parole to anyone convicted of a violent crime, despite the law, rehabilitation and readiness for parole.  The Result – people with indeterminate sentences of 15 years to life have been repeatedly denied parole; some, on this 15-year MPI, have served 40 years and are still waiting to be granted and released to parole supervision.

In The Shawshank Redemption, a short story by Stephen King turned into a movie, there is the theme of hope running through the tall gray prison walls at Shawshank Prison.  In fact, the book in which the story The Shawshank Redemption is included, is one of four stories, each falling under a season.  Shawshank falls under Spring, as in “hope springs eternal.”  People who have and are in prison would tell you that Hollywood got Shawshank right, depicting the hope and despair of people in prison serving long terms, and of course there’s that excellent scene where the Morgan Freeman character gives the parole board a piece of his mind —  pure Hollywood!

There is nothing more powerful than hope.  There is nothing more debilitating than despair.

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REVIEW OF “JAILHOUSE JOURNALISM: THE FOURTH ESTATE BEHIND BARS”

Posted on July 13, 2014 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Not much has been written about the history of the prison press. Indeed, until now, according to James McGrath Morris, the author of Jailhouse Journalism: The Fourth Estate Behind Bars, the only book was The Penal Press by Russell Baird. Because of this, many people would be hard-pressed to name a prison journalist. Two names might come to mind, Wilbert Rideau, editor emeritus of the multi-prize-winning prison magazine The Angolite, and Mumia Abu-Jamal, author of Live From Death Row and other works, who worked as a journalist before his imprisonment and continues to do so. People familiar with Abu-Jamal though might be surprised that he is not mentioned in a book about prison journalism, but this is so because, unlike Abu-Jamal, the prison journalists mentioned are or were affiliated with a prison newspaper or magazine.

In Jailhouse Journalism, Morris has provided a highly readable and informative history of the prison press, which begins in the spring of 1800 in a New York City debtors’ prison. William Keteltas, an attorney who had a practice on Broadway, is responsible for the first prison newspaper in the United States, Forlorn Hope.

From the very inception of the prison press, its mission was to champion the rights of prisoners. Prison journalists believed in the power of the pen, that they could reach outsiders and change the image of convicts. In Keteltas’ case, he campaigned for the elimination of the crime for which he was imprisoned. Rideau and his fellow editor, Billy Sinclair, wrote that the “Angolite is one of the few instruments left us through which to convey realities and to chip away at the monstrous image the public has conceived of us.”

(One of the most moving stories in the book concerns Tom Runyon, a depression-era bank robber in the Iowa State Penitentiary whose writings interested and earned the support of the mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason. In the prison’s monthly paper, Presidio, Runyon wrote a column, “Leaves from a Lifer’s Notebook.” In one of these columns he wrote about Ole Lindquist, a lifer who “had not received a visitor in forty years, a Christmas package in thirty years, or a personal letter in twenty years…. Newspapers and radio stations picked up the story and spread it across the country.” The public immediately responded, sending Ole Lindquist presents, letters and cards. Some people went further, writing to the governor. Lindquist received so much support, the governor commuted his sentence, making him eligible for parole and he was released about two years after Runyon’s profile of him. The Angolite can boast about a similar story. In an article about long-term prisoners, the magazine highlighted the case of Frank Moore, “who after spending thirty-three years in prison was overlooked by the bureaucracy of the corrections department. Following the publicity generated by the Angolite article, the Board of Pardons requested his prison record and shortly thereafter voted to release him.”)

Jailhouse Journalism is not simply about “monstrous” prisoners who picked up the pen when imprisoned, although the book has its share, including the Younger Brothers of the Jesse James Gang and Charles Chapin, famed editor of New York’s Evening World until he shot his wife and was sent up the river to Sing Sing. Included in the book are such “politicals” as the men of the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies, as they were nicknamed), who were imprisoned during the Great Red Scare for multiple crimes against the federal government. Moreover, there are two excellent chapters, one on the internment of Japanese-Americans in “Relocation Camps” during World War II, and the other on the 425,871 German, Italian and Japanese prisoners of war from the same war in the 500 POW camps in the continental United States, and their papers.

The very short chapter about Nazi POWs, entitled “Der Ruf” (the Call), is worth the price of the book in and of itself, especially for people unfamiliar with this part of American history. A number of human rights lawyers and others are familiar with the Chinese prison system, which seeks to “reeducate” prisoners. A similar experiment was conducted in American POW camps. The idea was to “reeducate” Nazi POWs, “to help create a non-Nazi postwar Germany by exposing prisoners to the superiority of democracy.” For this task, the Prisoner of War Special Projects Division was created. Former German professors and writers who had exhibited anti-Nazi behavior since their captivity were recruited. These POWs were placed in Fort Philip Kearney in Rhode Island, which came to be known as the Idea Factory or, more simply, the Factory. “The plan called for using literature, movies, newspapers and magazines, music, art, and classes to convert the POWs to American ideals and values.” Already, both Italian and German POWs had at least eighty papers. The Factory conceived of a paper, Der Ruf, to compete with those already in existence. Though rightfully seen as propaganda by the German POWs, Der Ruf had the highest circulation of all the POW papers, probably because it was well-financed by the American government. As a footnote, after the German POWs were repatriated, two of the editors of Der Ruf, Hans Werner Richter and Alfred Andersch, retired to the Bavarian mountains and started Gruppe 47, which grew into an important literary movement which, according to scholar Karl Arndt, “once more made German literature an important factor in world literature.”

On a whole, prison writing aspires to be literature. In this, it has been vindicated by the numerous awards prison journalists have won, as well as the books they have written.

Although Morris writes that the written word has lost its primacy in our lives today, mostly because of television, it still has a power any literate person can discern. It can also transform lives, one reason why the prison press is so important and has struggled against the yoke of the censor.

Censorship, of course, is a great concern of prison journalists, and it is discussed in this book. When prison administrators took to the idea of allowing prisoners to publish papers, it was highly “regulated,” read “censored.” Moreover, at the time of the prison reform movement of 1870, there was a debate whether or not there could be a “free” prison press. (This debate is still with us.) Most prison officials wanted to use the prison press for propaganda purposes, even limit “outside” news. This was a time when prisoners did not have access to outside papers. During the prisoners’ rights movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, this was challenged in courts and the issue of prison censorship was ultimately decided by the United States Supreme Court, in such cases as Procunier v. Martinez, Pell v. Procunier, Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union, Turner v. Safley and Thornburg v. Abbott, which basically circumscribed prisoners’ First Amendment rights. There is a brief discussion of the first three cases.

As the millennium approaches, it is also the bicentennial of the prison press. Sadly, the prison press is no longer a vital part of prison life. In fact, the prison press is dying. In 1963, a “free world” paper, the Saturday Review, listed the Top Ten Prison Publications, as well as three Honorable Mentions. Today, because of a scarcity of prison publications, there are only two standouts, the Angolite and Prison Legal News, published by two prisoners in the state of Washington, both of which were not around in 1963.

A prison paper may seem irrelevant to people in the free world, but it is not. Many of the prison papers and magazines mentioned in Jailhouse Journalism received support from outside subscribers. Indeed, outside readers were sometimes the prison press’ greatest supporters. I am convinced that despite the “monstrous image” the public may have of prisoners, some people want to hear from them. For those who do not, I can only state that there is something prisoners have to say in their writings and it is worth reading. As a start, read Jailhouse Journalism.

[1999]

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Review of “No Man’s Land”

Posted on July 13, 2014 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Prison is a place steeped in mythology, from the outright lies about it politicians tell to promote their “crime-fighting” policies to the propaganda prison officials print in their periodicals to justify its raison d’être; even prisoners, in their writings, contribute to this mythology.

In No Man’s Land, Fielding Dawson’s twenty-first book, a short, provocative novel, this mythology is addressed head-on. Through the eyes of Francis Robinson, a poet who is teaching a special class in playwriting at Snagg Prison, a mythical place that could be any maximum-security prison in the United States, we are taken deep into America’s heart of darkness. As Robinson goes “deeper into the labyrinth” to get to the School Block and the classroom where he will teach, he comments that it is dark and that he sees very little. Despite not being able to see much, he could hear the prison talking. It “had a voice of its own: well over a century old, its voice sonorous, on a wavelength outside my own. It had an added grating, dungeon echo that seemed to follow wherever I went, inside my ear yet inside its walls.”

Prison walls do talk. The corridors, as well as the cells, are overcrowded with the ghosts of prisoners’ past. These “ghosts” cannot tell their stories, but they can tell them to the people who walk the prison’s corridors and are confined in its cells, with the hope that they will tell them. This is not to say that everyone hears the voices. One has to really listen, and it is self-evident that Dawson is a good listener, that he hears what the walls whisper, what the ghosts give voice to, and what his students say, for he has taught writing in prison since 1984. For this reason, even though he is an “outsider,” he speaks with the voice of a prisoner in the know and is considered an “honorary convict.” As an honorary convict, however, there is a price Dawson must pay, the awful price of knowing that our prison system is not what it proclaims to be; and it is far worse than we can even imagine. With this knowledge he must do something, to write about it, at least, to debunk some of the myths.
Robinson’s descent into the mythical Snagg Prison, and it is a descent, is worthy of Dante. In fact, the walls quote the poet’s famous line: “Abandon hope all ye who enter me!” Robinson, though, has hope, the hope of the word, its power to reveal and transform. Armed with copies of the first ten pages of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson (“for a sample of format”), and a copy of Hamlet, this hero, who is by no means a young idealist at 60 years of age, enters the labyrinth to do battle with and to strike a blow at the monster the prison system has become. He enters the classroom to demonstrate to the prisoners that there is drama in their lives, that their lives in prison are tales worth telling. The prisoners, of course, are reluctant. One states that he does not want to write about the reality of prison life. He lives it every day and absolutely hates it. This is a problem because, despite his best intentions, Robinson has some hard-learned notions about prison and prisoners and playwriting. (Maybe there “wasn’t any plot in prison life,” as one prisoner has told him.) Perhaps the main problem is that the prisoners themselves have become mythological creatures. In addition, they are men whose lives are so meaningless they live fantasy lives to escape the reality of prison. But the show must go on and it does and the drama unfolds. The prisoners write and act the parts of their play, which is tentatively titled, “In the Dungeon.” They easily fall into character, not because they do not know of any others, but because they are imprisoned in a larger than life drama in which they, as well as the guards, are mere pawns.

Though brief, this is an ambitious novel, tackling the major problems our prison system is beset with: overcrowding, despair, double-bunking, violence, AIDS, anger, racism, the lack of “rehabilitational” programs, the end of college-level instruction and education, the exploitation of prisoner labor and the willingness of politicians to throw so much money at the prison system.

There is one critical flaw in the book: a gratuitous prison rape of a “new young kid,” even though it takes place, so to speak, off-stage. How often has the public heard about prison rape? So much one would think it is commonplace. Granted, at one time it was a big problem, especially in some Southern prisons. Indeed, Wilbert Rideau and Billy Sinclair, the famous prison editors of The Angolite, wrote an expose on this entitled, “Prison: The Sexual Jungle,” published in the November/December 1979 issue of their magazine, for which the pair won the prestigious George Polk Award. More than twenty years later, prison rape is not the problem it used to be, yet far too many people still see it as such, perhaps including Dawson. To debunk this myth, this reviewer conducted an unofficial survey, asking twenty prisoners (who have been in all the maximum security prisons in New York) with an average of twenty years in prison if they had witnessed or knew about a prison rape. All told, only one had witnessed forcible oral sodomy; all had heard about at most one such rape; none of this happened in recent memory. Watching OZ, the critically acclaimed HBO prison drama about a mythical prison of the same name, however, one would think otherwise. (In one episode a raped prisoner’s ass is tattooed. His rapist tells him, “Now your ass belongs to me!”)

Notwithstanding the above, No Man’s Land is a quick but thoughtful read. Granted, it is a polemic against the prison-industrial complex, but this does not detract from its power. In fact, this makes it a must-read. Indeed, because the monster the prison system has become has spread its tentacles far and near and is currently holding approximately two million people and counting, and because astronomical amounts of taxpayers’ money is being spent (read “wasted”) on it, almost anything half-decent informing people about prison as it really is is a must-read.
The problems of crime and imprisonment and recidivism may seem complicated, but there are some simple solutions: increase the availability and use of alternative sanctions, award the states with incentive grants for reducing recidivism instead of keeping people imprisoned for longer periods of time, as the federal government currently does, and make the education of prisoners a priority.

Snagg Prison is like the Labyrinth designed by Daedalus, the great, legendary Greek architect, a place of confinement from which escape was thought to be impossible. Once inside, one would go endlessly along its twisting paths without ever finding the exit. But there was a simple solution: all one had to do was take a ball of thread, fasten it at one end to the inside of the door and unwind it as one went on. One could accomplish one’s mission and then find one’s way out by rewinding the thread. Can we find our way out of the No Man’s Land of the prison-industrial complex, of prison expansion and sentences seemingly without end just as easily? As Dawson demonstrates through Robinson, one does not have to be a hero in the classical sense to stand up to the monster and help people escape from a seemingly hopeless situation.
[2000]

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A Father’s Day Message…for Mothers

Posted on June 15, 2014 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Beware the self-fulfilling prophecy!

One day, in the South Bronx, I observed the following: a young Latina mother with two boys, around ages 6 and 10, standing in front of a bodega.  The mother seemed agitated.  The older boy was looking up and down the street.  The mother burst out, “Your father ain’t shit!”  The older boy quickly retorted, “You ain’t shit!”

Regardless of how a mother might feel about the father of her children, the children don’t feel the same way.  This young mother might feel that way, but she should never verbalize it in front of her children.  People don’t have to be together to be amicable, especially around the children.  I would bet that later, this same mother will say something like this to her son: “You’re just like your father!”

Mothers, in the absence of fathers, do extraordinary jobs raising their children.  Still, an extraordinary mother cannot even be an ordinary father.

Granted, too many fathers are absent, but many are fully present.  In fact, many are the custodial parent, and we don’t hear much about them.

When I conducted parenting classes on Rikers Island for men, I did the following exercise.  I would draw three columns on the board.  At the top of each column were the following categories: “My Father”; “The Ideal Father”; “Me.”  I instructed the men that this exercise called for them to be brutally honest, with themselves, and hopefully they’d shared.  I would start with “The Ideal Father.”  A long list of positive characteristics made it under this category: strong; provider; caring; present; teacher; leader, etc.  I then went to “My Father.”  Under this category there were mostly negative characteristics.  As they listed them they laughed: sperm donor; absent; unknown; piece of shit, though a few positive characteristics would make the list.  Finally, the spotlight was on them as fathers.  As we compiled this list, the laughing stopped.  When we compared them and their fathers, they saw that they had become their fathers, at their worst.  I would point to the characteristics of “The Ideal Father,” tell them that they know what being that kind of father looks like, that they could strive to embody those characteristics.

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Drop the Rock, that is, the argument using people convicted of violent crimes to make the case…

Posted on June 1, 2014 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

The Rockefeller Drug reform movement argued its case for reform by using people convicted of violent crimes, stating that people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses were being sentenced to the same amount of time if not more than people convicted of homicide-related cases. One should note that many of the people sentenced to 15 years to life or more under the Rockefeller Drug Laws refused plea bargains with significantly lower sentences. I know an individual who sold drugs at his college campus to undercover cops. He was released on bail and went right back to campus and sold drugs to other undercover cops. He was offered a plea bargain of 2 to 4 years for both crimes but refused to take the plea. He went to trial, was convicted, and sentenced to 15 years to life. He ended up serving 13 years. Now the real issue here was how he was prosecuted. The prosecution, in offering him that plea of 2 to 4 years, was admitting that for his crime he should serve no more than 4 years. How did he end up with a 15-year minimum sentence? That’s the problem. Instead, the Rockefeller Drug reform movement compared apples and oranges. It should have went after the prosecutors, and a system that unconstitutionally increased sentences for people who exercised their Constitutional right to go to trial. Needless to say, those most vociferously opposed to Rockefeller Drug Laws reform were prosecutors.

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The Eleventh Muse

Posted on May 28, 2014 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

The Eleventh Muse

(For Maya Angelou)

No stories of female griots? How so?
You’re a part of that time honored tradition.
Great God fashioned “Lucy” first,
The progenitor of the human race.
Children first heard stories sitting on your lap,
Stories of Creation, and of the Fall;
Stories about rising, not falling —
You nurtured future griots on oral history.
We have gathered together in your name
So you can tell us why the caged bird sings.
You opened your arms and embraced us,
Loved us with the heart of a phenomenal woman.
You have your finger on the pulse of the nation.
We eagerly await your prognosis.

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A New Paradigm – Elevating the Voice of Formerly Incarcerated People

Posted on May 7, 2014 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

With the recent launch of JustLeadershipUSA, Glenn Martin, President and Founder of JustLeadershipUSA, is looking to elevate the voice of Americans impacted by crime and incarceration, especially people who have been imprisoned, by positioning them as “informed, empowered reform partners.”  This will be done through leadership development, policy advocacy and reframing.  JustLeadershipUSA has as its goal cutting the U.S. prison population in half by 2030.

At 2.2 million people confined, the U.S. prison population has increased exponentially since the late 1960s,beginning with Richard Nixon’s candidacy and declaration of war, that is, the “war on crime,” in 1968, which specifically targeted Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, which Nixon declared “lawless.”  Since then, various laws and policies, on the Federal and state level, have contributed to mass incarceration and the grossly disproportionate imprisonment of people of color, mostly men, in the United States: Rockefeller Drug Law in New York (1973), which was adopted in other states; mandatory minimum sentencing across the nation as well as the Federal criminal justice system (1984), with the Federal government providing monetary incentives, in the form of block grants, for states to adopt mandatory minimum sentencing, which almost always increases the length of time in prison (New York’s Governor, George Pataki, continuously mentioned how New York would not be eligible for these block grants to build more prisons or hire more police if the state did not adopt mandatory minimum sentencing, which it did in 1998 after the tragic killing of a young woman by an individual who had been on parole for a nonviolent crime); crack-cocaine laws, which created longer prison sentences for crack-cocaine convictions over cocaine convictions, which disproportionately impacted people of color; the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which made it easier, read quicker, to execute people sentenced to death; it also limited the right of habeas corpus, creating procedural hurdles that were too high to jump, not to mention the United States Supreme Court even ruling that a showing of “actual innocence” by an individual in prison could not overcome these procedural hurdles; tougher parole releasing policies as well as the increase in technical parole violations (returning people to prison for non-criminal violations of parole rules such as curfew violations or “fraternizing with known felons”); elimination of temporary release (including work release) programs; and three strikes laws requiring life sentences for those with three separate felony convictions, even relatively innocuous and nonviolent third felony convictions.

Thirty years after Richard Nixon declared his war on crime, people incarcerated in the mid- and late ‘60s, ‘70s and early ‘80s were being released from prison.  This is the reality, as Jeremy Travis writes and thus entitles a journal article and a book: “But They All Come Back: Rethinking Prisoner Reentry” (2000), and But They All Come Back: Facing the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry (2005).  At the other end of the mass incarceration tunnel were individuals coming back from prison.  The numbers are staggering.  In 2002, more than 630,000 individuals were released from Federal and state prisons, and since then that number has remained pretty much the same.  Thirty years prior to that, the number was less than 150,000 individuals.

When we look at the more than 630,000 individuals released from Federal and state prisons every year, this translates into, every day, about 1,700 individuals released from these prisons, exploding onto the American landscape and this Era of Reentry.  At the same time, there was great interest and thus an explosion of journal and newspapers articles on this phenomenon as well as books such as Jennifer Gonnerman’s Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett, which shows how a bit player, not a queenpin, got caught up in a drug sale and was given a life sentence under the draconian Rockefeller Drug Law, while the more culpable people involved in the drug world who set her up got a get-out-of-jail-free card.  Additionally, there were the stories of the people themselves, those who had been imprisoned; they showed us compelling cases of the possibilities of transformation and what it looked like.  They added something new, something different, to the reentry narrative, that is, through their stories, which they began to tell at conferences, at colleges, to journalism grad students, on radio shows and television.  Some wrote about these experiences, mostly stories of their transformation.  See Harvey Brown’s Freedom at Last: The Life of an Ex-Con, and Theo Harris’ Blessed and Highly Favored: Memoirs of a Multiple Felon.  See also Piper Kerman’s Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison.  The most important thing was that these men and women were taking control of their stories, not just being subjects, but also being authors of their own stories.

There was something familiar in their stories, in their narratives, if you will, something that tapped into the historical connection between slavery and imprisonment in the United States.  As many should know by now, imprisonment of people of color replaced slavery.  (And the disproportionate imprisonment of people of color began even before the end of slavery.  Gustave de Tocqueville and Alexis de Beaumont, in their study, On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application in France, published in 1833, noted the disproportionate imprisonment of “Negroes” in the Southern States.)  This is stated explicitly in the Thirteenth Amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”  The big difference is that people who have been duly convicted of a crime aren’t given any moral agency – “They committed a crime!”  This, some think, takes away from the fact that imprisonment is slavery under another name, and imperfectly Constitutional.

These stories, these narratives, are similar to the slave narratives, eloquently given voice by Frederick Douglass.  Making the transition from talking about slavery to talking about prison, more recently, we think of Malcolm X and his odyssey as documented by Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

These stories have been critical in including the voices of those imprisoned and those formerly incarcerated.  However, they are mere testimonies, powerful, but individual stories that only touch the iceberg of the problems of mass incarceration.  Imagine if Frederick Douglass confined his speeches to his experiences as a slave.  We would not have got his talk about the importance of the franchise, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (1852), which is an issue of importance today for those imprisoned and those formerly incarcerated, many of them having lost the right to vote for life in a number of states, mostly Southern, as a direct result of a felony conviction.  And imagine if Malcolm X confined his speeches to his experiences as a prisoner.  We would not have his famous speech, “The Ballot or the Bullet” (1964), given more than 100 years after Douglass’ speech on the same topic.

When Martin of JustLeadershipUSA talks about elevating the voice of Americans impacted by crime, he is talking about much more than the formerly incarcerated providing their testimony.  He is talking about the people “closest to the problem” providing solutions to the problem.  Indeed, many who have been on this reentry circuit for a number of years think of this “testimony-telling” and only testimony-telling as a “dog and pony” show.  Needless to say, providing this testimony is important, more so for someone recently released as opposed to someone who has been out of prison for a number of years and has continued his or her formal education and worked in various capacities in the for-profit and the not-for-profit world, oftentimes in leadership positions.

JustLeadershipUSA is positioning itself to go beyond the dog and pony show.  It is, however, only the most recent organization looking to elevate the voice of formerly incarcerated people, but unique in that its goal is to reduce the U.S. prison population in half by 2030.  Before JustLeadershipUSA, in New York, there was the Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions.  In California, there was All of Us or None.

The mission of the Center For NuLeadership on Urban Solutions is “to influence socio-economic, criminal and juvenile justice policy by providing research, advocacy and leadership training to formerly and currently incarcerated people, their families, communities, allies and criminal justice professionals….”  Similar to JustLeadershipUSA, the Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions promotes “active participation in criminal and social justice policy decisions, discussions and deliberation by the people whose lives are most directly affected and who have a legitimate stake in the outcome.”

All of Us Or None “is a grassroots civil rights organization fighting for the rights of formerly- and currently-incarcerated people and our families.  We are fighting against the discrimination that people face every day because of arrest or conviction history.  The goal of All of Us or None is to strengthen the voices of people most affected by mass incarceration and the growth of the prison-industrial complex.  Through our grassroots organizing, we will build a powerful political movement to win full restoration of our human and civil rights.”

There are other organizations across the country, founded by formerly incarcerated individuals and their families, most notably Citizens Against Recidivism, Inc., based in New York, which holds an annual Awards Ceremony honoring formerly incarcerated people for their work in the world and in their communities.  The Awards are named after formerly incarcerated people.  Also worth noting is Exodus Transitional Community, Inc., a faith-based reentry organization in East Harlem founded by Julio Medina, which has garnered national attention for its work in the field of reentry.

Many of the above organizations were formed because the founders wanted to create new possibilities for themselves and others similarly situated.  Additionally, working at established organizations, reentry organizations included, these individuals encountered the green wall, the glass ceiling for formerly incarcerated people.  Most of these organizations were not truly cultivating the leadership of its formerly incarcerated employees.

Michelle Alexander, in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), has mainstream America and academia talking about the criminal justice system in ways we have not previously, stating that incarceration is being used as a “system of racial control.”  Martin and JustLeadershipUSA, and the other organizations mentioned above, as well as those not mentioned, are creating a new paradigm to not only elevate the voice of formerly incarcerated people, but also to develop the leadership of this group.  With this, we are moving into another stage of this Era of Reentry.  Stay tuned.

 

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Just Say Yes to the Ministry of Life! (Corinthians 4:7-18)

Posted on April 20, 2014 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

When we read the letters of the Apostle Paul to the various Christian communities he wrote, we see the theme of death bringing them together like relatives to a funeral.  At times it seems like Paul was obsessed with death and dying.  In his first letter to the Corinthians, he said, “I die every day” (15:31).  It is important to note that Paul had bitter and dangerous enemies.  Every day he put himself at risk of death by proclaiming the Gospel.  And although I think that on one level Paul was talking about the suffering he endured as a result of his ministry, I can’t help but think that he was preaching a ministry of death, an otherworldly religion unconcerned about the quality of life in the present; but the Gospel deals with the present reality of God’s rule and its future realization.  In the very same letter Paul wrote, “I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, as though sentenced to death.”  I’m still talking about the first letter to the Corinthians.  Paul wrote, “The appointed time has grown short” (7:29).  The appointed time has grown short?  In other words, time was running out for Paul.

In other letters Paul conveyed this impending sense of doom, of death fast approaching, of the end of the world as he knew it.  I believe that Paul believed that the end was near.  Not only do I believe this, but many of the early Christians did too.  In fact, one of the issues in Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians dealt with this ministry of death.  Some Thessalonians had stopped working because they believed that the end was near.  Paul had to write to them and tell them not to stop working.  In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians he had to deal with this very same question of death, and the resurrection.  If there is not life after death, the people said, let us eat and drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.  But Paul instructed the Corinthians not to stop living, and not to live in excess.  Live as if the end is near, but live as if it isn’t.  The key word here is “live,” and we’ll get back to it.

Paul has traveled a long way since he was on the road to Damascus to persecute Christians, since he began to proclaim the Gospel, and he may be a little tired.  Carrying the cross wasn’t an easy thing in Paul’s time.  Christians were being persecuted.  Paul may be tired of living and his understanding of the end of time probably contributed to this thinking, which comes across as a theology of death.  But the lesson of the cross is not the dying that Jesus did, but the living that we must do so that his life and his ministry on this earth will not have been in vain.  Paul knew this.  In the letter to the Romans he wrote:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life….  So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Rom 6:3-4, 11).

If we follow the cross we don’t follow it in anticipation of death, of life after death – at least not physical death.  No, we don’t have a death wish.  We don’t follow the cross as if it is a road leading toward death.  The ministry of Jesus wasn’t a ministry of death.  It was a ministry of life.  That’s why Jesus was healing people, so that they could participate in the life of the community.  The ministry of Jesus wasn’t simply a ministry of the afterlife, which is another way of saying death, perhaps a “life” we don’t understand.  Jesus’ ministry was a ministry of life.  And we say yes to the ministry of life, and no to the ministry of death.

Let’s talk about life, not death.  To Paul’s statement that he dies daily, let’s say that every day we live.  To his statement that he is living under a sentence of death, let’s say that we are living under a sentence of life.  To his belief that the end is near, let’s say that we are at the very beginning.  Let’s talk about life, not death.  But we can’t talk about the cross without talking about the death of Jesus.  And we can’t talk about the death of Jesus without talking about the resurrection.  And we can’t talk about the resurrection without talking about Paul’s witness and ministry.  And we can’t talk about Paul’s ministry without talking about this ministry of death.

The cross is not about death.  As Delores S. Williams writes, “People do not have to attach sacred validation to a bloody cross in order to be redeemed or to be Christians.”[1]  When Jesus cried out on the cross that he was being forsaken by God, it was because he valued life; he didn’t want to die, even though it was written and would be fulfilled.  Jesus’ instincts told him to fight for life.  Remember, Jesus didn’t choose the cross.  Like any death row prisoner, Jesus fought for his life.

The cross symbolizes life, revealed in the resurrection.  The resurrection is about life after death, in more ways than one.  For us, it’s not simply the afterlife, after physical death.  It’s a new life for those while they’re imprisoned.  It’s life after prison.  When we talk about death, we mean that the sinful persons we were are dead.  We are “born again” as new men with a vision of life.  We take up the cross and the idea of resurrection in order that we can live, in order that we can rejoin the community of believers.

When we talk about resurrection, we talk about Paul’s understanding of this.  Now, Paul is one of the central characters in the early development of and propagation of the teachings of Jesus.  He wrote many of his letters from prison.  I like the idea that he illuminated the Biblical faith from prison.  What does Paul say?  He’s an “ambassador in chains,” and he’s not ashamed of his chains.  As Malcolm X often said, there is no shame in having been a criminal, but in remaining a criminal.

As I said, Paul’s often writing from prison.  Despite this, he’s a central character in the story of Christianity.  However, he’s not always right.  I should say, we don’t always agree with him.  He wrote from a particular social location, where slavery was accepted, where women were considered subordinate.  We don’t agree with Paul that slaves should obey their masters or that women should be seen and not heard in the church.  I’m saying this to say that Paul is deeply influenced by his social context and heavily burdened by the demands of the cross.  He often lost heart and spoke about the end of time, which was hard for him to visualize.  Moreover, his letters have been interpreted in far too many instances to form a theology that’s purely otherworldly – let’s get out of this physical world and to the next!  How many times have we heard people say, “I’m ready to die for my Lord!”  Jesus didn’t ask anybody to die for him, but to live through him, walk the way he walked.

The Psalmist wrote, “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Ps 28:13).  I believe this.  Jesus talked about the realization of a new community on earth that would live a certain way.  This community would embrace justice and lovingkindness.  The kingdom of God is right here, not in some place beyond space and time!  Jesus was saying that the kingdom of God can be realized on earth as it is realized in heaven.  Look around, right here, right now.  So when Paul talks about the ministry of death, let’s think about the burden of the cross and how sometimes it overwhelmed him.  He probably thought that that place beyond time and death was better than the present order.

When we carefully read the letters of Paul, we see that it’s not the ministry of death that Paul believed in, but the ministry of life.  Let us carefully note one verse in the text for today.  It is, “For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh” (4:11).  I want to repeat a part of that: so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh.

Now, if we’re talking about the life of Jesus, we’re talking about his ministry, we’re talking about the way he lived it.  If we read the Gospel carefully, we see that Jesus, this mortal Jesus that lived, loved life.  All of the acts he performed were life-affirming.  He gave the blind their sight so they could see the beauty of the world; he enabled the lame to walk so they could get around on their own; he cleansed lepers so they could rejoin the community; he gave the deaf hearing so they could hear the good news, the Word of God; he raised the dead.  Why raise the dead?  For life.  Yes, Jesus was about life, not death.  In providing bread, Jesus fed the hungry.  This is life-affirming.  In turning water to wine at that wedding Jesus enabled the guests to make merry.  Yes, Jesus liked to eat and drink and I dare say be merry.  This is life-affirming.  When he was on the cross and screamed out that he was being forsaken, perhaps he was crying out because he didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to stop living and ministering to the people he loved.  His earthly ministry of life, he knew, was coming to an end.  And if what is said about death approaching is true, his life, his ministry, probably flashed before his eyes.  Perhaps it so overwhelmed him that he screamed out that he was being forsaken.  It’s a human instinct not to want to die, to fight for life.  Why would we go totally against our instincts, the right to life, the breath of life that God gave us, and follow the cross if it means death?

In the text for today, Paul talked about his afflictions.  They were foremost in his mind.  They were practically a part of his ministry – they came with the cross.  But I think if Paul had to do it all over again, he would.  He really had no choice.  He’d heard the voice of God.  He was instructed what to do.  He was chosen as an instrument for God’s purpose.

A pastor who visited prisoners preached from Acts 9:1-22.  That’s the story of Saul on the road to Damascus.  That’s the story of the beginning of Saul’s conversion.  The pastor preached that Saul was given a second chance.  With that second chance he became Paul and embarked upon his ministry.  And the rest is history.  His letters in the New Testament are a testimony to his ministry, are a testimony to how we all must live, how we must travel.

Once we choose the road we’re going to travel down, our walk in life, especially if we choose to walk in Jesus’ footsteps, we must keep in the forefront of our minds that every step we take our faith is being tested.  We have to walk the walk, not just talk it.  Every step we take we should come closer to our calling, to hearing the voice of God.  Of course all conversions aren’t as dramatic as Paul’s, but we all come closer to that second chance that we ceaselessly hope and pray for, but only if we are on the right road.  That’s what life is all about.  Rarely do we get it right the first time.  Many of us don’t even get it right the second or third time.  Still, don’t give up.  That’s what the teachings of Paul are all about.  Hearing and living the Word.  That’s what the Gospel is about.  Hearing and living the Word.  We know this in our hearts, we know.

We are not always optimistic.  It’s hard to remain optimistic in this political climate where our leaders talk peace but wage war.  Even the language of “crime-fighting” is couched in terms of war.  The “war on crime” and the “war on drugs.”  In all wars, there are casualties.  People die.  Many physical deaths, some spiritual ones.  That’s the giving up on hope, because we give up on God.  God, where are you?  Have you forsaken me?  When we reach this point, we may scream out like Jesus on the cross that we have been forsaken, we may, like Paul, think about death and dying, go straight to that afterlife which must be better than this life.

We often feel that we are a million miles from redemption, a million miles from restoration to our communities and our families.  We have traveled long and are often tired, but we should not lose heart.  “This slight momentary affliction” is preparing all of us for a glory beyond what even we expect of each other.  For this reason we should not lose heart.  We know that there is a ministry of death, and a ministry of life.  Let’s choose life.  Let’s say yes to the ministry of life, and no to the ministry of death.  Let’s hope and pray that all of us will just say yes to the ministry of life, for it is the ministry of life Jesus preached and believed in.  It is life we should believe in, not death.  Let’s eat and drink and breathe this ministry of life.

We have this treasure, this life in earthen vessels, or clay jars, if you will.  From the womb to the tomb we have a lot of living to do in what seems like a very little time, but whatever time is allowed us, it is time beyond measurement.  Let’s make the most of this time.  It is time in which we must find our calling, our ministry, and fulfill it.  And it’s a ministry of life, not death.  Listen to the voice of God.  Hear the Word of the Lord.  This life was created for living, not dying.  Just say yes to the ministry of life.  Just say yes to the ministry of life.  Amen.

 

[1] Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1993), pp. 200-01.

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