Who practices their morals nowadays?

Reflecting on yesterday's lesson, I was speaking to Ms. White from DVLEAP (Domestic Violence Legal Education and Advocacy Program) about how morality is also something that's a struggle at our agency. When it comes to legal issues the program tries to help as many clients as it can to try and make the justice system work in their favor. Sometimes from the trauma and stress, these clients might make certain decisions that lead to the agency to discharge them from the shelter. In the mission statement I read at the beginning of the semester, I read about how the agency helped to change these women's lives. As we spoke we started to speak about a case where a client had to be discharged with her 3 little kids. Where are our morals and values in this case? How can I stand there and allow an agency like this one do that to this client? Just as Straker was battling with her morality when she had Sandy as her client, likewise these clients create a struggle wih our own morals within our work. These decisions are made because as Ms. White explained: it's for the safety of the rest of the women at the shelter. In order to keep the shelter going, there needs to be a security of confidentiality. When it comes to the courts, many of the abusers have already done their homework and filed for and order of protection or custody against the victim. What ends up happening is that the judge grants the abuser his petition and the victim is left without a guarantee that she will be safe and better off in the longrun. The first thing that condemns me is Thomas Giovanni's quote, "I'm just doing my job." What morals do you struggle against in your agency or even in society?

Our Great System

First and for most, thank you to Thomas Giovanni for giving us your time and pearls of wisdom: Why is it that everything I heard yesterday wasn’t a surprise but still hit me as if I had just heard it for the first time? As I heard the statistics and looked around me, a weight weighed heavily on my spirit. As I sat in that courtroom and saw one by one as each individual had an average 6 minute hearing, I couldn’t help but scuff and chuckle at how ridiculous this
reality was. Is this really OUR system? Irrevocably and undeniably to my disdain, it very much is! Mario Rocha was tried and convicted on 1st degree murder and spent 10 years of his life in prison before his conviction was reversed. Fernando Bermudez was tried and convicted of 1st degree murder and spent 18 years in prison before his conviction was reversed. Jeffrey Deskovic was tried and convicted of sexual assault and murder and spent 15 years in prison before his conviction was reversed. All three men have been exonerated since and have had their records wiped as if it never existed. BUT IT DID. These men were given counsel and were tried by their peers by the very same system that we say prevails of which I guess in some ways it did for these men. On the other hand, those ten minutes that was allotted Mario Rocha, Fernando Bermudez, and Jeffrey Deskovic were obviously not enough to help their counsel better prepare an argument to the judge for at least bail. None were released from the point of being arrested. Did these men really get their ‘Due Process? While in D.C., Christal Wood, a single mom and law school graduate is now suing the state of Washington for involuntary servitude. I never really realized it until Thomas put it into words but the system does run on indigenous communities of which if there would be none if they didn’t exist. I will finish with a wise man’s quote regarding what is supposed to be our social justice system: “I thought we were supposed to keep people in cages because we are afraid of them not mad at them.”

Who to Believe?

We all have different ways of interpreting, translating, and perceiving ideas, concepts, and situations, which makes it difficult for us to trust anybody including the criminal justice system. We believe that the criminal justice system has the answer to everything relating to crime, but do we really trust them? Does the criminal justice system perform to the full extent of the real meaning of the word “justice”?

Usually, when I am sitting in court listening to the cases, most of which are drug use, I have always asked myself how does the judge know what decision to make or whose side to take. I have seen some defendants, charged with the same offense, being released on ROR (Release on own recognizance), bail, or ACD (Adjourned contemplating dismal). ACD is when the defendant is released with the condition that he/she does not commit another offense within 6 months and their case is dismissed. Before anything, the judge learns about the defendant’s case, but the judge only gets a quick overview of why he/she got arrested. The judge does not know the needy details of the incident, and therefore she would be basically making a decision based on the police officer’s point of view. In my point of view, this is not fair or justifiable because the judge does not know exactly what went on. What if the cop maybe slipped a bag of weed into the defendant’s pocket or book bag just to fulfill his/her duty for the day? Or what if one of his friends tried to get rid of their bag of weed by hiding it in their back bag? There could be so many perspectives, but which one do we believe. It is like we are caught up between the wall and the sword not knowing whose side to take. I wonder since we all have different perspectives on certain issues does the side we choose to believe, is it in any way affected by our culture, values, morals, or traditions?

What "Work" Does Vera's Founding Narrative Perform? 

Scribbled first in my “Vera Visit” notes are the words “the narrative.” I wrote them while listening to Michael Jacobson talk about Vera’s founding, which we’ve all read about in Roberts' biography of Sturz’s life. For a moment, I couldn’t help thinking about Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man while listening to Vera’s founding myth. (I ask that everyone suspend judgment about the use of the term “myth” for a moment.) Ellison has a comical scene in the novel describing the Homeric trials and tribulations of “The Founder” as he escapes from slavery and embarks upon a dramatic odyssey across the South before finally founding the historic black college, based loosely on Tuskegee University, that the main character attends at one point in the book. Part parody of Tuskegee founder Booker T. Washington’s autobiography Up from Slavery, the founding myth is trotted out and re-enacted yearly for an audience of the college’s rich white benefactors, for whom the dramatized struggle for individual freedom, culminating in the triumphant founding of the college, facilitates their blindness to the continuing racism and racial injustice that surrounds them. What I want to take away from Ellison here is the idea that a narrative performs some kind of work. I’d like to focus this week’s blog on thinking about what kind of work Vera’s founding narrative might perform for Vera.

First, a quick word about narrative and myth: I don’t use the term “myth” to suggest that the story of Vera’s founding is somehow untrue. I use it to highlight the fact that all narrative, perhaps particularly historical narrative, is 1) necessarily incomplete—distorted by and circumscribed within language; 2) deliberately dramatized to make not only a particular point but also an interesting story based on the conventions of storytelling; and 3) subject to revision and reinterpretation across time and through retellings and rehearings.

            Jacobson naturally started out his talk (“In 1961…”) by retelling the story Vera tells about its founding, but Evan Elkin also used elements of the story to illustrate points he wanted to make in his talk. For example, in explaining to us that all demonstration projects contain within them a “theory of change,” he used an example from the founding myth: “If you let poor people go home while awaiting trial, they’ll come back to court.” The use of this example exhibits elements of pure practicality; it’s a ready-made, familiar example that makes explanation easier. But there is also drama and pathos built into the story of how Sturz and Schweitzer noticed a particular injustice—poor people who were presumed innocent lingering in squalid jails only because they could not afford bail—and did something about it—The Manhattan Bail Project. It’s a good example because it smuggles the ideals behind Vera’s work into the explanation, making their articulation unnecessary. It’s also interesting to think here about how this element, the theory of change, which someone came up with at some point after the occurrence of the events described in the founding myth, has been retrospectively inserted into the myth as a characteristic feature of what Vera does and has always done. Thus, in addition to its practical and emotional uses, Vera’s founding narrative serves to maintain a sense of continuity—even if this means slight, almost unconscious revisions to the narrative as time passes—that helps to institutionalize both Vera’s ideals and the organization itself.

            In addition to this institutionalizing work, the founding myth seems to serve as a sort of touchstone, an idealized site into which the vagaries of day-to-day operations and pressures can no longer intrude. I was somewhat astonished to hear Elkin's candid discussion of the “quick turnaround projects” that Vera does. He gave the example of “a mayor who has a year left and says he wants to do something significant and asks, ‘Can you help me cook something up?’” A project cooked up with a politician concerned about his legacy seems somewhat disjointed from ideas such as “all demonstration projects have a theory of change” and “all demonstrations projects are a piece of science.” While the demands placed upon Vera in reality by politicians and other people in government “sometimes inhibit the ability to fully develop a project and give it time to grow and then test it,” the founding myth represents a pristine place in which everything works perfectly: the injustice is noticed; the project is designed; the project has time to grow; the project is tested; the project is funded; the system becomes more just. In some way, the founding narrative must operate as a bulwark against the erosion of Vera’s ideal self and a source of inspiration, even a reminder, about what people there are doing and why.