Engaged Spirituality

Hola mi gente,
This February each Sunday I will be giving a series of four lectures at the Upper East Side’s All Souls Church at 1157 Lexington Ave.

The overall theme is what some call engaged spirituality… 

Too often, I hear my brothers and sisters talk about their experiences during their incarceration and sometimes I feel some of us doing the world a disservice. Too often, we talk about the horrors of our personal experiences without offering the important systemic analysis that undergirds those experiences. On the flip side, too often I hear people talking about transcending their experiences of incarceration but, again, at the expense of offering our unique perspective on the nature of the moral rot that sustains this society’s obsession with punishment and revenge.

I will be offering just such an analysis during the four interactions at All Souls Church and what I hope is that the interaction with the people in attendance will result in a shift in consciousness -- or at least a deeper awareness -- of the depraved mindset that is the foundation of the punishment paradigm.

The interactions (not lectures) will take place on the successive Sundays in February (5^th, 12^th, 19^th, and 26^th from 10:00-11:00 a.m. each morning). I offer a brief outline of the first interaction below.

Hannah Arendt proposed the thesis that people who carry out unspeakable crimes, like Eichmann, a top administrator in the machinery of the Nazi death camps, may not be crazy fanatics at all, but rather ordinary individuals who simply accept the premises of their state and participate in any ongoing enterprise with the energy of good bureaucrats.

Doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on “normalization.” This is the process whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and even unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as “the way things are done.” There is usually a division of labor in committing and rationalizing the unthinkable, with the direct brutalization and killing done by one set of individuals or institutions; and another section of society keeping the machinery (sanitation, food supply, etc.) in order; still others producing the implements of brutalization, or working on improving technology (e.g., a more efficient crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive napalm, a better prison or isolation cell). It is the function of defense intellectuals and other experts, and the mainstream media, to normalize the unthinkable for the general public. Arendt’s “banality of evil” lends an important dimension to the question of the racialized social control that we call mass incarceration. 

What does personal liberation mean at a time when we can no longer differentiate between prisons and jails and the communities that serve as feeders for the prison-industrial complex? In fact, marginalized communities -- mostly black and Latinx -- are de facto open-air detention centers that differ from jails and prisons only in their degree of freedom of movement. Much of what transpires inside “the walls” of detention centers occur inside the walls of housing projects and surrounding ghettos, for example. Housing projects very much resemble prisons in the way they are designed and policed.

If a spiritual discipline -- its ethical principles and cognitive practices -- is to have any relevance, then they must address modern issues. Both sections will be informed by my personal experiences resulting from the choices I made while incarcerated at Rikers Island and NY State’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, please consider helping me out by sharing it, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even throwing me some money on GoFundMe HERE or via PayPal HERE so I can keep calling it like I see it.

Mass Incarceration is NOT the Problem

Hola mi gente,
Thought I’d wade in… LOL

A major challenge of this movement is to do the work that will create more humane, habitable environments for people in prison without bolstering the permanence of the prison system. How, then, do we accomplish this balancing act of passionately attending to the needs of prisoners… and at the same time call for alternatives to sentencing altogether, no more prison construction, and abolitionist strategies that question the place of prison in our future?
 -- Angela Y. Davis

Yes you read that right: mass incarceration isn’t the problem. You could close all the prisons you want. You could end mass incarceration right now and it would accomplish very little. In fact, saying you’re for ending mass incarceration is a nice thing to say, but it doesn’t do squat if you’re not addressing the root causes at the core of our society’s way of interacting with Black and Latinx people.

In order to better understand the criminal justice system, one can no longer differentiate between prisons and jails and the communities that serve as feeders for that particular form of racialized social control. In fact, marginalized communities -- mostly Black and Latinx -- act as open-air detention centers that differ from institutions of incarceration only in the degree of freedom of movement. Much of what transpires inside “the walls” of prisons or jails occur in inside the walls of housing projects and surrounding ghettoes, for example. Housing projects very much resemble prisons in the way they are designed and policed -- isolated and rigidly controlled.

The social control of people of color has had several permutations. First there was chattel slavery, which morphed into Jim Crow apartheid, which mutated into the ghetto, and now we have mass incarceration. It’s the spiral dynamics of racialized social control. Mass incarceration is like a cough -- a symptom of a deeper disease. You can address the cough, but if you don’t address the root cause, the disease will continue to destroy the body. Do away with mass incarceration (which will not be happening any time soon, by the way), and you’re still left with the virus that sits at the core of this nation’s soul.

Mass incarceration is symptomatic of the social psychosis of institutional racism. I am asserting that slavery and mass imprisonment are intrinsically linked and that we cannot understand the latter -- its timing, composition, and inception as well as the acceptance of its harmful effects on those it impacts -- without returning to the former as a starting point. In other words, from a historical perspective, the mass incarceration of mostly people of color in the United States is a direct offshoot of the roots of the institution of racism.

Doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on “normalization.” This is the process whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and even unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as “the way things are done.” There is usually a division of labor in committing and rationalizing the unthinkable, with direct brutalization and killing done by one set of individuals; and another section of society keeping the machinery (e.g., sanitation, food supply, correction officers, judges, lawyers, etc.) in order; still others producing the implements of brutalization, or working on improving the technology (a better crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive napalm, a better prison or isolation cell). It is the function of intellectuals and other experts (many who call themselves social justice advocates), and the mainstream media, to normalize the unthinkable for the general public.

This is why it is incorrect to say that our criminal justice system is broken. It isn’t. It has been working exactly as it was meant to work for centuries.

The lack of a shared basis for moral judgment in a multicultural, multiethnic, multi-religious nation dooms the justification of punishment. The economic cost of our system of punishment stands at about 100 billion dollars per year. It destroys families and communities, and it deprives those caught in its maws their most basic liberties, sometimes for a lifetime. Vacuous references to “ending mass incarceration” or vague phrases are woefully inadequate as resistance to a system of justice predicated solely on race and punishment and do not serve as a foundation with which to challenge the prevailing paradigm of justice as punishment.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, please consider helping me out by sharing it, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even throwing me some money on GoFundMe HERE or via PayPal HERE so I can keep calling it like I see it.

Idiocracy and the Wall

Hola Everybody,

Yeah, it’s cold, but I love living in a temperate zone where the seasons change. Or at least they did before climate change J

Wall Street

Fact: Some young Black and Latino men are detained at Rikers Island -- New York City’s penal colony -- at the cost of upwards to $2000,000per human being annually.
Fact: Public officials resist increases in education spending. A fraction of what it costs to lock a child up.
Fact: Overwhelmingly, incarcerated children are people of color.

As a young man, one summer I managed to get a messenger job at a small brokerage house on Wall St. One of my best friends, a darker-skinned brother, had been working there before me and he put in the good word. By the end of the summer, I had moved up (again, with the help of my friend) and was now balancing the sheets. That was a promotion and a raise.

I was very young back then and not too motivated. I wasn’t very responsible: I would miss days and I wasn’t all that inspired. Yet, when another promotion came up later that year, my friend was passed up and the promotion was offered to me. This was bullshit, and everybody knew it. My friend had been there longer than I had, had more experience, and was there at work every day. We both know it was because I was light-skinned and he wasn’t. I was going to quit because I couldn’t bear it, but my friend insisted that I take the job. He said they would only give it to someone else.

We learned early on it paid to look or be white!

I mention this because I spent most of my young adulthood working at various places on Wall St. Let me tell you: Wall St. in the 1980s?! DAMN! It was crazy out there! The culture of Wall St. and my love for the party life took me down hard. By the end of the 80s, I was blackballed from working on the Street, spiraling deep into my addiction. I worked hard and I played harder. It wasn’t unusual to go on a business lunch and instead of it being a two-martini lunch, it was acceptable -- even expected -- to have a three-line lunch. Cocaine was king on the Street. I can’t say it was all regret. I fact, I had a lot of fun. I partied a lot, used a lot, spent a lot -- well, you get the idea.

I had two very close friends -- crib brothers as we used to say back in the day. Where you saw one, the others weren’t too far behind. We grew up together, became men together and we worked on the Street.

Anyway, we would always meet at this park -- Jeannette Park -- at lunch on Fridays to drink rum and coke, and smoke weed, plan our weekends. One day, there was this older black dude who always seemed to check us out. I mean, we were pretty much out there, always surrounded by women, and dressed to the nines -- young and cocksure muthafuckas. Anyway, this dude came up to us and shared some of this fierce weed he was smoking and he told us a story I never forgot. He asked if we knew the history of where we were standing and acting all cocksure and shit, and I told him, me always being the smartass, “Yeah! Fuckin' Wall St.!” He smiled... 

He said, Wall Street became the financial capitalist center because it was the first big slave trade center in the colonies, and, later, the new nation’s principal slave trading port, where the business of slavery was transacted (until 1862).

He continued, And as the business of slavery went, so did all other businesses. For about 125 years, there was a wall that separated the financiers, speculators and bankers from the stench, humiliation, and daily grime of young New York’s vibrant slave trade business and African and white working-class residential areas.

Hence the name, Wall St.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Hatred

Hola Everybody,
I’m struggling, but I’m still up. Some of this springs from reflections of my recent work with the Alliance of Families for Justice. Check them out. Get involved. Don't react -- respond!

Anger and Hatred

Police attack peaceful water protectors with powerful water canons in freezing temperatures. Photo: Avery Leigh White

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd
 -- Bertrand Russell

Hatred has never conquered hatred. Hatred merely leads to revenge, and revenge leads to more hate. Hence, a cycle of suffering is set in motion that can go on and on. We only need to look at the world around us to see the sad evidence of this truth.

Hatred is an extreme form of anger. The teachings of the path I follow take anger very seriously because anger causes so much suffering. I see hate as being rooted in fear. Fear is a powerful core emotion.

Even when anger is not acted out and seems controlled, a person who is inwardly angry can instantly change the atmosphere of a room she enters. There is an invisible, but palpable chill and anyone nearby becomes more guarded and less spontaneous. This happens without conscious effort. It seems to be a response at a very deep (cellular?) level to the quality of energy that anger gives out.

You see this happen often in personal relationships, but the wreckage of collective hate is everywhere to be seen in our world. There is, for example, the ascension of a racist billionaire to the highest office in the known universe. Put there by millions who protect their anger onto blacks and Latinx. 

When anger is acted out and results in violence, the damage is obvious. Some years ago, I read the words by the Cambodian monk, Maha Ghosananda, who observed “When this defilement of anger really gets strong, it has no sense of good or evil, right or wrong, of husbands, wives, children. It can even drink human blood.” This was a tragic comment upon a bloody civil war that had torn Cambodia apart and killed almost everyone he knew. It is also, in my view, what fuels the long-standing and shameful US practice of racialized social control which has resulted in the devastation and enslavement of millions of people -- the vast majority Black and Latinx.

On the contrary, what is often not understood about hatred is the harm it does to those who cultivate it. The first person hurt is always the one who is full of hate. An mind full of hate is a suffering mind. An angry mind is agitated and tight, constricted and narrow in its thinking. Judgment and perspective vanish. All good sense disappears. One feels restless and driven. Nothing is satisfying, everything is tension. And this is what happens at the collective level. The vast majority of white people in the US, for example, are so angry, that they are easily manipulated into projecting their anger on the most vulnerable of the population.

What happens during anger is that the sense of self becomes very large, and so does the sense of “the other.” A major reason anger is so very painful is that it instantly creates a sharp distinction between self and other. An imaginary line is drawn that cannot be passed. For example, if I make the statement, “Any friend of those assholes, is not a friend of mine,” I am drawing a line (more on that later).

There is also an intoxicating effect to anger. There is a strong feeling of self-righteousness. Thoughts rooted in justification take over: “She abused me! Look at what she did to me!” This is combined with feelings of defiance and rectitude: “I am right!” However, underlying the intoxication of anger is the pain of a mind so narrowly constricted that it closes itself off from human connection. This also plays out on the national stage.

Whites, many of whom have been shut off economically, turn their anger on the false perception of hordes of undisciplined, immoral, unintelligent Blacks and Latinx who have destroyed “America” -- the same America that needs to be “great again.” In the 1990s, it was the specter of black and Latinx “super-predators” who had no conscience and needed to be “brought to heel” like animals.

The results of such hatred can be devastating. Hatred is like a poison in the mind. It generates an unhealthy cycle of cause and effect. Every thought, word, or act, or social policy has an angry after-effect. Like throwing a pebble into a pond, an act or thought rooted in hatred sets into motion a series of ripple effects that go out in every direction. Caught in the grips of hatred, we can come to feel that we are stuck with what we have done, and with the effects that we have caused.

I believe that the majority of harmful patterns of behavior are rooted in unconscious anger/ hatred. People will gossip about others, spread false accusations about others as a way of maintaining this angry state of mind. Existing in an environment of fear (lack of faith), hate, and anger, they lash out at others and create policies in order to maintain their inflated egos.

I guess the answer is not to respond in anger, but to generate love instead. However, one can choose to love from afar. One can choose to minimize contact with harmful and negative influences. Yes we can disagree and still love each other. However, if your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and the denial of my humanity and right to exist, then I can’t do the kumbaya thingee. Still, my response must be rooted in compassion (of self and other) otherwise I will have become the face of hatred. Cornel West reminds us that we should, “Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”

And so it is with my own decisions about the difference I want to make in this life. I think what makes decisions skillful or not has a lot to do with intent. If one has an angry or hateful intent, then, like the ripples in the pond, we all suffer the consequences. However, if the intent is based on compassion and an attempt to create, or be a part of, a social justice movement, then we can live knowing that we’re walking our path to the best of our ability.

For me the answer isn’t so much on closing down jails or prisons, or even undoing mass incarceration. I see mass incarceration and racialized social control as symptoms of a deeper problem. Rather, I see the work of envisioning and creating a world where there is no place for dehumanization, the real work. Everything else is still dehumanization.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

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