Interrupting Cycles of Violence
September 4, 2013 - Uncategorized
POST #4 April 2
Between 1980 and 2000 the U.S. penal population has grown from around 300,000 to more than 2.4 million. In 2012 nearly 7 million people were living under correctional control, and 65 million felons have been relegated to the status of second-class citizen. (1)
This epidemic of criminality has been diagnosed a number of ways. Most experts identify illiteracy, poverty and broken homes as the foremost contributing factors of mass incarceration. These socioeconomic conditions underpin a scandalous practice of accepting blighted communities as commonplace, necessary, and even, easily replaceable. Instead of striving to help our neighbors realize God’s plan for their lives, we acquiesce to nefarious strategies of privation, gentrification and redevelopment by eminent domain.
In good conscience, are we able to say we have done all we can to protect the pride and dignity of our neighbors? Have we done all we can to prevent the continuation of the cycle of offense? Or, can we do MORE?
In 1997 the U.S. Department of Justice issued a sobering projection, stating, “If recent incarceration rates remain unchanged, an estimated 1 of every 20 persons will serve time in prison during their lifetime.” (2) In 2001 that estimation increased from 1 of every 20, to 1 of every 15. Such an ominous forecast for human suffering must be perceived as an opportunity to change the narrative of untold lives before the prophecy is fulfilled.
There is much we can gain from the life of Mahatma Ghandi, who embodied Christian principles of love for neighbor and liberty for the oppressed. Whenever Ghandi saw the disenfranchised being dehumanized, he “not only spoke out against the caste system, he acted against it. He took ‘untouchables’ by the hand… renamed them ‘harijans,’ which means ‘children of God’… and led them into the temples from which they had been excluded.” (3)
Over the years I have accumulated a short list of heroic organizations that have effectively opposed caste-ism and interrupted cycles of offense. Their desire to improve the academic, economic and environmental conditions of urban communities offer a palpable example of pragmatic ways to rehabilitate broken lives and communities.
* HOMEBOY-INDUSTRIES assists at-risk and formerly gang-involved youth to become positive and contributing members of society through job placement, training and education. At Homeboy, they ask, “What if there were a way to invest in gang members, rather than just seek to incarcerate our way out of this problem?”(4)
*STARTING UP NOW helps young people discover ways to apply entrepreneurial skills and spiritual gifts within their community. They equip educators, pastors, and youth workers with entrepreneurship education as an outreach tool to the community as a stewardship training program for youth.
* NO MORE VICTIMS targets high school children of incarcerated parents. Their focus is to assist at-risk children in preventing the continuing cycle of addiction, abuse, violence and incarceration by providing them with a safe facility to go to.
In her book, Common Purpose, Lisbeth B. Schorr makes an important point illustrating why programs like these should be at the center of any plan for urban community restoration. Schorr says, “young black males often adapt a ‘face-saving defensive posture,’ which includes the determination not to conform, to resist low-wage work, and to adopt an anti-achievement ethic at school. They do not trust teachers, social workers, and other ‘helping’ professionals. They refuse to be a part of the system because they feel the system has rejected them.”(5)
These organizations I’ve listed enjoy success because they have created a system based on the principle of reciprocity. They don’t condescend- to the people, they cooperate with them. Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy-Industries, describes their philosophy as, “Kinship–not serving the other, but being one with the other. Jesus was not ‘a man for others’; he was one with them. There is a world of difference in that.”(6)
Can we, the Body of Christ, do more to prevent the cycle of violence from continuing? I say yes; If our worldview regards all of mankind as image bearers of God; Yes, if the love of Christ compels us to search out our brothers and sister who live in the margins of our personal and congregational life; And yes, if we will utilize the innovative and creative gifts God has given us to reconcile the world to Him; Indeed, we will Do M.O.R.E. when we embrace the Ministry Of Reconciling Everyone.
PARTING THOUGHT:
“Only kinship. Inching ourselves closer to creating a community of kinship such that God might recognize it. Soon we imagine, with God, this circle of compassion. Then we imagine no one standing outside of that circle, moving ourselves closer to the margins so that the margins themselves will be erased. We stand there with those whose dignity has been denied. We locate ourselves with the poor and powerless and the voiceless. At the edges, we join with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop. We situate ourselves right next to the disposable so that the day will come when we will stop throwing people away.”(7)
RECOMMENDED READING:
* Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. Gregory Boyle
* Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest To Change Harlem and America. Paul Tough
Sources:
1. Pew Center on the States, One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections (Washington, D.C.: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2009) –; Quoted in Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow. New York, The New Press 2012. p.60, 147
2. U.S. Department of Justice
3. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Mertin Luther King Jr.; Edited by James M. Washington. New York, Harper Collins 1986. p.28
4. Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. New York, Free Press
5. Lisbeth B. Schorr, Common Purpose: Strengthening Families and Neighborhoods to Rebuild America. New York, Anchor Books 1987. p.xxii
6. Boyle, p.188
7. Boyle, p.190