Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the CCDA podcast.
Speaker: In this episode, Sam Heath and Jami Hodge talk about Journey to Justice, advocacy that moves beyond the criminal legal system and builds what we need.
Speaker: We join them for their workshop.
Speaker: All right, good afternoon, good morning, everybody, and welcome.
Speaker: So this is a session through CCDA, Christian Community Development Association's LIS Week, so Locked in Solidarity.
Speaker: It is an annual week-long focus on what does it look like to equip Christians and churches within them to engage mass incarceration, to respond to it, to end it, to live within it.
Speaker: And so this event specifically we've called Journey to Justice, Advocacy that Moves Beyond the Criminal Legal System and Builds What We Need.
Speaker: And so I'm here with my friend and colleague, Jami Hodge, and we'll intro ourselves in a second to talk about those things.
Speaker: So what that'll look like for us today is going to be about 40 or 45 minutes of us having a conversation with each other and through that and sharing with you all about what our journey to justice has been.
Speaker: and then saving some time at the end for you all to ask questions.
Speaker: You can feel free to put those in the chat.
Speaker: And if you don't want to forget them or to save those at the end, and at the end, we'll also be able to see everybody and you can come off mute and talk live if you would want, but we'll make sure to save some time at the end chat with you all.
Speaker: So let me pray and open us up.
Speaker: And then we'll start with Jami introducing yourself and then I'll say that and then we'll dive in.
Speaker: But we are really glad that you all are here.
Speaker: Father, we're grateful that you've given us the space in this time.
Speaker: Thank you for the work of CCDA and John Perkins and all of those that have been involved in the specifics of Lockton Solidarity Week.
Speaker: We pray for those who are incarcerated that you would bring freedom in all the ways that those individuals need it and that you would equip those of us on the outside to care for them, to care for and to think about the system that stands and what changes need to be made.
Speaker: We pray that you would equip your church to love our neighbors well.
Speaker: We pray for this time in this space that our conversation would flow and be engaging and be exciting and be provocative and that it would help people think deeply and ultimately that it would help us love you and love others well.
Speaker: Thank you for this time in this space.
Speaker: Amen.
Speaker: Amen.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, John, we want you to say hey first and then I'll go in after you.
Speaker: Yeah, thank you, Sam.
Speaker: And thank you everyone for coming.
Speaker: We are really excited just to be sharing the space with you today.
Speaker: And I, in introducing myself, I'm going to kind of share in a way that is aligned with the theme of the conversation.
Speaker: So a little bit about my background that has led me to being here at EJUSA, where I have the distinct privilege of serving as our executive director
Speaker: of an incredible organization and team trying to make a difference in the world.
Speaker: So a little bit about my background is I am a lawyer by training.
Speaker: I'm originally from Detroit.
Speaker: I'm zooming in here from just outside of Washington, D.C.,
Speaker: And I spent many years working inside the criminal legal system as a prosecutor.
Speaker: I'm always clear in talking about that, that I went in with eyes open.
Speaker: So, you know, when I, when it was suggested to me by a mentor that I think about the prosecutor's office, I initially was surprised and thought, you know, my experience growing up in Detroit as a black person
Speaker: was police and the system was something to be afraid of, something to be careful around.
Speaker: Even by that point, as a young lawyer, I already had cousins who were incarcerated.
Speaker: And so it was
Speaker: took me a minute to think about do I want to be part of something that I think of as often causing harm.
Speaker: And what I decided was, you know, well, if the system is broken, which is what I thought at the time, that it's important for some of the power holders, and I do think prosecutors are some of the most powerful people who operate in the system, to be people like me who come from my background as, you know,
Speaker: first sent my family to graduate college and certainly go to law school, who saw firsthand that the system isn't always fair and often is harmful to black and brown communities.
Speaker: And so I went in thinking, okay, if you get the right people, you know, who understand what this power does and how it can be used differently.
Speaker: The other piece was, it was my first opportunity to learn about things like diversion and problem solving courts and that, oh,
Speaker: prosecutors can use their discretion to do something other than send people to jail or prison.
Speaker: But I will say what I learned in my 12 years of serving in that role and in some other roles tied to the system or tied to criminal justice more broadly was that I eventually came to the conclusion that the system actually wasn't broken.
Speaker: And the more I learned
Speaker: particularly in my later years, made me really reach the conclusion that through a lens of history, which I think is incredibly important when we talk about this work, it helped me understand that there was intentionality in how the system was created and how it operates.
Speaker: And I'm looking forward to us talking a little bit more about that.
Speaker: But I left
Speaker: I was working as a prosecutor just in D.C., not far from here.
Speaker: I left there to then lead a work, done some criminal justice policy roles in the Obama administration, which actually gave me the lens to understand that these problems were broad, not just in the courtroom that I practiced in, that there were real policy implications and policy that drove a lot of what you see happening inside the court system.
Speaker: And then had the chance to go to the Vera Institute of Justice to found and lead a program that essentially was to work with prosecutors who had been elected on platforms of change.
Speaker: So they ran on platforms of ending mass incarceration, addressing racial disparities, making prosecutors offices more transparent.
Speaker: And my job was to create a program and build a team to help make those campaign promises real.
Speaker: And I
Speaker: thought at that time that clearly all of my professional experiences and some of the personal ones had been to prepare me for that role, to really help prosecutors go from being this traditional law and order shop to seeing their role differently.
Speaker: But the one thing that I would come up against me and my team was violence.
Speaker: There'd be a willingness to try different policies if it was
Speaker: bail reform or increasing diversion, as long as we were talking about low level nonviolent things.
Speaker: But anytime the issue of violence came up, the answer was always just to punish.
Speaker: And then the tools, there was not a willingness to change the tools or the approach.
Speaker: And that is what really drew me to EJUSA.
Speaker: And, you know, I look forward to talking a little bit about our work and really how we know that we're never going to end mass incarceration.
Speaker: We're never going to have the safe communities
Speaker: that we want or world that we envision where violence is rare, unless we address violence and address those drivers of violence and do it very differently.
Speaker: So I'll stop there.
Speaker: That's probably a longer intro than I intended.
Speaker: And Sam, I look forward to you sharing about your journey.
Speaker: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker: And I feel people pick this up already, but Jami and I both work at Equal Justice USA.
Speaker: And so she's our executive director and my role with it is engaging Christians and churches.
Speaker: So my name is Sam Heath and I live in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I've been here for about 10 years.
Speaker: And my background is that I was a high school history teacher for a decade and taught in high schools in North Carolina and here in Virginia.
Speaker: And through a through
Speaker: a couple paths came into this criminal legal system world and this work.
Speaker: One path of it was through teaching and through teaching about the history of Europe and the US, which is what I specialized in.
Speaker: I saw, as my wife says, she uses the term that she felt bamboozled in the way that we were raised and what we didn't know and what we were not taught about, especially what it meant to be white and Southern and for me male and what those things meant in the history of those labels and the impact of those in spaces.
Speaker: And so as I increasingly learned what that meant, I wanted to share and to teach that.
Speaker: And the more I taught that, the more I wanted to more than just teach it, though that's key to equip others to live in light of those things.
Speaker: But the criminal legal system space really came through.
Speaker: One of my best friends was arrested and was put in prison for 13 years.
Speaker: And we were friends before his incarceration, during it and after.
Speaker: through visiting him all over North Carolina at different prisons.
Speaker: It was my first time in prisons and seeing what they are and seeing exactly what Jami said.
Speaker: I'm glad, so glad, Jami, you already brought this up that I no longer say the system is broken either.
Speaker: I think the system and by the system, I mean the criminal legal system, all pieces of punishment, police and prisons, all of that.
Speaker: I think it's constructed, as you said, with intentionality and that it's effective at doing what it wants to do to whom it wants to do it to for the benefit of those that it wants to benefit.
Speaker: And so in light of that, the system is actually working by the measure of its intention.
Speaker: Then that made me think of how do I live in light of that?
Speaker: Now that I've seen through the eyes of my friend what prison is and what it can't do, how it has a cookie cutter response to all people and all forms of violence without being able to bring any form of nuance or humanity to it.
Speaker: And then being in Charlottesville during the Unite the Right rally in 2017, that catapulted our family into a place of what do we do?
Speaker: And then it was really during the uprisings of 2020 when I first said out loud, I would love to be in a space of the criminal legal system and what does advocacy look like there?
Speaker: And so about two years ago, I was able to find and apply to EJUSA.
Speaker: And my role specifically is I'm the manager of what's called our Evangelical Network.
Speaker: So EJUSA is not a faith-based group, but often the way I describe it to people, as I say, we're a national organization.
Speaker: We're working to repeal the death penalty and to help communities respond to violence without centering punishment, police, or prisons.
Speaker: And my role within that is to especially equip and accompany evangelical churches, denominations, groups, Christians as a whole, but especially evangelicals in that journey.
Speaker: What does it look like to...
Speaker: not only reform the system, though there are aspects of that that are important, but to build something else, holding new responses to violence, as Jami was saying, and to work towards a world where violence is rare.
Speaker: So I've been with the organization a little less than two years and have known of CCDA and engaged it for about 15 or so years.
Speaker: And I'm so thankful for this platform to process and discuss all of these things.
Speaker: John, one thing I want to ask you about what you said, because this, I think, will give some more space for you to tease out your story.
Speaker: You talked about how you saw the level of power that prosecuting attorneys have.
Speaker: One, like, what do you mean by that?
Speaker: What does that look like?
Speaker: And then...
Speaker: How did you process that kind of as you came to see the level of power, I think, greater than any other role within the system that prosecutors have?
Speaker: And how is that imbalance of power for prosecutors itself a reflection of some of the problems of the system?
Speaker: Thanks, Sam.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: I think sometimes people are surprised when I say that because you think of judges, right?
Speaker: If you think of who's the power holder, they wear the black robe.
Speaker: We all stand when they enter.
Speaker: But the reason I say that it's prosecutors is because essentially prosecutors are the gatekeepers of the system.
Speaker: So when if you think of the police as being the entry point, because that is usually for most people, the entry point, it's through arrest or through some long term investigation that involves police or other forms of law enforcement agents or things like that.
Speaker: Ultimately, the decision whether or not for whatever that incident is to move into the system lies with the prosecutor.
Speaker: In most cases, there's there are a couple of exceptions, but in most cases,
Speaker: when that arrest happens, that case is then presented to a prosecutor.
Speaker: And it's a prosecutor who's looking with an eye, first legally, like, you know, for what this person's arrested for, what this officer's asking them to be charged for, can you legally make it out?
Speaker: But a prosecutor also has a broader sort of ethical responsibility.
Speaker: So maybe if the case can be proved legally, if the reason they have the evidence was because of an illegal search, the police violated a constitutional right in discovering the evidence,
Speaker: then there's a responsibility to dismiss, to not bring that case, even if you know you've got the person and they did the thing.
Speaker: And that discretion that prosecutors have as gatekeepers is largely sort of untouched.
Speaker: It's sacred.
Speaker: They're given this authority, they're given this responsibility and there's not any oversight really.
Speaker: And so if you think about particularly the size of our system, we have,
Speaker: our system is so big.
Speaker: It's 2 million people who are incarcerated.
Speaker: We have just the amount of money that we spend.
Speaker: Our police budgets alone are in the, it's 118 billion was the last number I saw.
Speaker: And that's, by comparison, if you think billion with a B, countries like Japan, Germany spend less than half of that on their military.
Speaker: So that just helps put that in a perspective.
Speaker: When you have a gatekeeping role and you can help decide what comes in and out, that can be very impactful.
Speaker: The other reason why prosecutors have so much power is because they decide what charges to bring.
Speaker: And sometimes those charges will take power away from judges.
Speaker: So if you think about mandatory minimums, where you're charged with a certain offense and that offense carries a mandatory sentence,
Speaker: If you prove that conviction or the person pleads to it, there is nothing a judge can do.
Speaker: Like they are bound by that law.
Speaker: And that is another power that lies with the prosecutor.
Speaker: And, you know, just they control like what's coming in and how it's coming in as a misdemeanor, as a felony, you know, as something with a mandatory minimum.
Speaker: So the power there is real.
Speaker: I think I thought, you know, that having someone who was closer to these issues, both, you know, in my personal experience, I'd had my father was the victim of a robbery, an armed robbery that left him with a closed head injury when I was in high school.
Speaker: So I'd seen that impact.
Speaker: which not just him, but our entire family, because he still lives with those with the implications, the consequences of what happened to him, even to this day.
Speaker: I'd seen violence up close.
Speaker: And then, you know, my brother had been in the system behind a substance use disorder that really came out of the trauma of my father's attack.
Speaker: And
Speaker: seeing how the system, you know, what happened to him was incarceration, periods of solitary confinement, you know, and all of, and kind of understanding our, the way we approach doesn't work.
Speaker: Oh, there's these other things that a prosecutor can do.
Speaker: They can dismiss, you know, they can divert out and get treatment for things.
Speaker: But in reality, what I realized is those options are very small.
Speaker: Like they're,
Speaker: it's so few cases that actually are qualified.
Speaker: There are a lot of qualifications to be able to get something other than punishment as a response.
Speaker: And that essentially, if you think about how the system was founded, and I'll talk a little bit about that, just because I think this history is important.
Speaker: And there's a big movement around this right now that's called abolish the exception.
Speaker: But if you think about the 13th Amendment and Sam, I know you know this well, but it
Speaker: abolish slavery except as punishment for crime.
Speaker: You know, so when we talk about in our work at EJUSA, how deeply rooted the system is, there's a direct connection between our legacy of slavery and that culture.
Speaker: If you think and you look at the history of policing, the root of policing were patrols to catch the enslaved, slave patrols.
Speaker: And so those things don't go away.
Speaker: They still exist at the culture, at the founding, at the root.
Speaker: And if we understand that history, then it actually isn't surprising when we see the racial disparities that exist, when we have black people making up 13 percent of the population, but 40 percent of those incarcerated.
Speaker: Or, you know, there's so many numbers literally that show that every almost decision discretionary point, there are disparities in terms of how it's black people are more likely to be stopped, more likely to be searched.
Speaker: more likely to be charged, more likely to face harsher charges, more likely to face longer sentences.
Speaker: Those discernities make sense when you understand that historical context.
Speaker: I feel like I probably should stop there just to.
Speaker: There's so much, right?
Speaker: In talking about prosecution, I think about how the system is set up intentionally to be adversarial, right?
Speaker: Like it is the state, this government against this individual.
Speaker: And it leaves out the survivor or the victim to really have a voice or a role, except to maybe be exploited by either side or re-traumatized and what's happening there.
Speaker: And so inherently it's set up in this way that for me as a Christian, as I learn more about the system was really problematic.
Speaker: I mean, the more that I saw in scripture, the more that I see what churches are called to is seeing crime, violence and sin.
Speaker: And those are not always the same thing.
Speaker: But when some kind of harm happens to see it as communal in its effect.
Speaker: And if it's communal in its effect, then it is communal in its path towards healing.
Speaker: And that healing being the goal is what I saw wasn't possible through my friend, that he needed healing.
Speaker: And I'm hearing that with your brother and with your dad, like the system literally in their response made those things worse.
Speaker: And in the case of your brother almost led to that as a response to it, because the system has very few tools to respond to those things.
Speaker: And we talk about punishment, police and prisons or control or really under all of that, I think, is fear that's used as a tool.
Speaker: And the more I thought through scripture, especially when we think of the most often repeated command in the Bible is do not fear.
Speaker: And yet the cornerstone of the system is.
Speaker: is fear.
Speaker: It's not capable.
Speaker: And so that adversarial piece to me was more and more just incongruent with how I saw the Christian community being called to live.
Speaker: And it just, it wasn't tenable.
Speaker: And it made me want to, if you know the Enneagram, if not, it's fine.
Speaker: But as an Enneagram one, it just, it rose up my sense of justice and made me want to move into a space of, well, what can we do?
Speaker: And how can we as Christians especially move into that?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: talking more and more about what is it that we actually need?
Speaker: You know, we're kind of making a case that the system itself isn't equipped to do even what it says that it's able to do.
Speaker: But you gave some of those statistics, but what are some other ways or measures that we can have of our system to see that it's large and it has very few tools and its result is often division and fear and racism?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, there's a ton of statistics.
Speaker: Before I list a couple, I just want to, the point you just made about
Speaker: not serving the person who's been harmed when victim survivor is just so important that I really want to underscore, particularly because for a lot of prosecutors and people involved in the system, if you ask them, why did they get involved in the system, police, prosecutors, others,
Speaker: it's often because they want to serve victims, you know?
Speaker: And I think that probably was one of the most eye-opening things to me as I, you know, kind of really began to step outside of the context of the courtroom and do my learning and zoom out and look in that my job actually wasn't, I didn't represent the victim.
Speaker: I represented the state and my job was to prove a conviction.
Speaker: And that actually came at the expense of what was best for the person who had been harmed.
Speaker: So, I mean, there are processes where you can force someone who doesn't want to, like they've been traumatized, they don't want to be involved.
Speaker: You can have them arrested and forced to testify.
Speaker: And that happens in the system, but people don't talk about that.
Speaker: But there's nothing about what the person who's been harmed needs is not the priority.
Speaker: It is to get the conviction and to punish.
Speaker: So I just wanted to underscore that.
Speaker: how much that's sort of a false understanding of what our system does, is that it gets justice for victims.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then just in terms of some of the numbers, I mean, we as a country hold about 5% of the world's population, but 20% of the incarcerated population.
Speaker: We know that
Speaker: that just in terms of, you know, I shared a little bit about the number, the cost of the system in terms of policing budgets.
Speaker: I think not only is it big, but then how we punish, you know, the fact that we still have the death penalty in so many states when 70% of the world's nations have abolished it.
Speaker: And, you know, that we still have, not just that we have it, but then our system is so flawed and it has so much of that history that leads to
Speaker: racial bias and the racial disparities that we have people, we've had 190 people who've been exonerated, you know, who otherwise would have been put to death, you know, and there even this week, yesterday, we had an execution in Missouri of someone who has innocence claims.
Speaker: And there are the way our legal system is set up is the goal is finality.
Speaker: It's not about truth.
Speaker: It's not about innocence.
Speaker: It is how do we once with you've had your day in court,
Speaker: how do we make sure that that conviction sticks?
Speaker: Like that's the point of the system.
Speaker: So it's not just big, it is also just very dehumanizing.
Speaker: Like how people are incarcerated in our country is different than in other places.
Speaker: In other places, there is an understanding of
Speaker: true sort of redemption and rehabilitation and an understanding that most people who go in are coming home, which is the case here.
Speaker: 95% of the people who are incarcerated are coming home here.
Speaker: It's just that because of our roots,
Speaker: in our legacy of slavery, when you are put in a system, they take your name, they give you a number, you get, you know, barely access to any real health care.
Speaker: It is everything, you know, exposure to violence and trauma, everything that is the shackling, you know, all of it, the removal from community, you know, you have to pay an arm and a leg just to make phone calls to be able to reach community, all of that.
Speaker: is a product of the dehumanization that's tied to our legacy of slavery.
Speaker: But I know we need to turn the conversation to really
Speaker: We understand there's a problem, but what can we do about it?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: The last thing I'll say, because it was where you ended, that Danielle Sered, who leads a group called Calming Justice, often talks about those drivers of violence.
Speaker: And we do, too.
Speaker: And we know what those are, right?
Speaker: We know that it's things like poverty.
Speaker: We know that it's things like racism and the disparity of the system and white supremacy.
Speaker: We know it's things like isolation.
Speaker: We know it's things like an environment of violence.
Speaker: All of those things, those four that I named, are within the system.
Speaker: To be put in prison is to experience those four things.
Speaker: So those individuals who are within the system often have experienced those already outside in the world and then re-experienced those within the system.
Speaker: And as you said, 95% of people are sent out.
Speaker: So the system, at minimum, just seems ill-equipped to address those things.
Speaker: And it's why I'm so...
Speaker: excited and interested and burdened for churches and Christians to think about, well, how can or should we uniquely engage that?
Speaker: Another statistic that came to my mind is one out of 100 individuals within our country is involved within the system.
Speaker: And so individuals don't know or interact with people who are directly impacted by the system on a regular basis.
Speaker: One, we probably do, and we might not know it, but also we've really got to question what kinds of circles am I living in if I'm not engaging those that are encountered by the system.
Speaker: And we might need to go out of our way
Speaker: to encounter those individuals, right?
Speaker: Like I want people helping those that are in need as they go through life.
Speaker: I think like the parable of the Good Samaritan, but sometimes we have to seek that person and those individuals out.
Speaker: And that's key.
Speaker: Yeah, I see in the chat that proximity is key, not just for those who've been out, but within the system, within prisons as well.
Speaker: Hi, my name is Christina Fore.
Speaker: And what I love about CCDA is that our faith is part of communities flourishing.
Speaker: Welcome to the CCDA podcast.
Speaker: Joni, what about what about this before we start talking about kind of what is advocacy and what does that look like?
Speaker: What are ways that your faith especially informs how you do this work?
Speaker: How in some ways is that inseparable?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, well, it's it's just inseparable.
Speaker: because it's such a key part of who I am.
Speaker: And so I think whether, and I do believe I've been called to do the things I'm doing, like these were not, I did not have a plan, you know, really God has opened doors every single step of the way.
Speaker: And it's been clear to me that this is, this is a purpose I'm supposed to serve.
Speaker: So it's, it's always been deeply embedded in how I approach the work.
Speaker: I mean,
Speaker: you know, I'll tell you, even as a lying prosecutor, I prayed over sentencings because they were the hardest thing to, you know, particularly as I dealt with more serious cases.
Speaker: And it just that it was the hardest thing because the only options were incarceration and how much, you know.
Speaker: And so it's always been kind of at the forefront.
Speaker: But I think what excites me about CCDA and Lockton Solidarity and these conversations is that
Speaker: We are, what we really need to address violence and to address harm is not actually in this system.
Speaker: I think this whole discussion we've been having so far just proves the point that the system is actually not the answer.
Speaker: And as a Christian, you know, like we are called, you know, it's part of Jesus's ministry to go to the oppressed, to go to the marginalized.
Speaker: And
Speaker: that is, you know, the overlap of who's marginalized, who's oppressed is exactly who's also most impacted by our system.
Speaker: And so, you know, how we, and I think what has happened and the resource piece to me is so telling, you know, people talk about how a budget is a value statement.
Speaker: I mean, we put so much of our resources.
Speaker: If you look at any city, county budget, police and courts get such a sizable
Speaker: portion of the budget.
Speaker: And it's at the expense of the things that we actually know will serve people.
Speaker: It comes at the expense of education.
Speaker: It comes at the expense of health care.
Speaker: It comes at the expense of having that net, you know, to provide services.
Speaker: And so we have a voice.
Speaker: Like we should be advocating.
Speaker: We should be, you know, out of a position of love and care.
Speaker: It should be part of our ministry to challenge these systems that are
Speaker: making it harder for those who are marginalized and oppressed yeah and and what's being done whether it's executions or the system as a whole is being done in our name and and that was one piece that was especially offensive to me is that this thing that i increasingly had an issue with this this system was continuing that in my name supposedly on my behalf and that if i remained angrily neutral it would still continue
Speaker: And then I realized it would take an active engagement to, I think, about Psalm 10 and breaking the arm of the wicked.
Speaker: It takes an intervention other than just thinking that we don't support it.
Speaker: And so that's where that advocacy piece came in it.
Speaker: My mind always goes back to the answer to two questions.
Speaker: And the more I thought about my response to these things, the more I realized I felt compelled as a Christian to move into this kind of space.
Speaker: And one was, who do we worship as Christians, right?
Speaker: We worship Jesus, but we worship this man who was arrested, was put through a trial, was tortured by the state, was imprisoned by the state, and was executed by the state.
Speaker: And a man who talked about the state.
Speaker: So much of what Jesus did had political and public influence.
Speaker: implications.
Speaker: And so Jesus was surrounded by, and at the end of his life was put to death by the state.
Speaker: And so that proximity that Jesus had to the system of the Roman empire of his day was right there.
Speaker: And not only that, we see Jesus talking about these things.
Speaker: I recently was really
Speaker: motivated by and convicted by at our churches.
Speaker: We're now in Epiphany Tide reading through Luke four, where Jesus talks about proclaiming liberty to the captives.
Speaker: And I thought for most of my life that that was a spiritual call of defeating the bonds of Satan, sin and death.
Speaker: And that's true.
Speaker: But there's also a literal piece of that, of people who are in chains and bound here on earth being set free and
Speaker: and experiencing some healing and some shalom here on earth.
Speaker: Not just a spiritual eternal sense though, yes, but also something here.
Speaker: So I think about who do we worship?
Speaker: We worship an incarcerated and executed man, but then also who our neighbor is.
Speaker: And I talked about the parable of the good Samaritan.
Speaker: As we go through and live our life, we will see and stumble on those that are in need.
Speaker: And Jesus defines neighbor, not as those just that you live in with proximity, but anyone in your proximity who has need.
Speaker: And for us as a nation, we often don't notice or see that underbelly of those two million people who right now are incarcerated and all of those affected by it and how those things ripple out.
Speaker: As an educator, I often thought like, ooh, the baseline of our country to change and address is the education system.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like that that shapes us as a nation more than anything and shows who we are.
Speaker: And then the more I saw with the criminal legal system, I thought, actually, no, it's what we do with those who commit crime that reveals our priorities as a nation.
Speaker: And whether we know that or not, it's shaping us by being present within a nation that responds to things in that way.
Speaker: So, oh, yeah, it's it's pivotal as a Christian can't can't see that.
Speaker: And not respond to that, whether that be like on own time or professionally, there's always these ways to engage and respond.
Speaker: And then when I started labeling it as advocacy, which for my first 20 years growing up, you know, Christians did not advocate.
Speaker: They were not political.
Speaker: That started to become more comfortable.
Speaker: And again, that's kind of journey into justice about for me, a part of it was redefining advocacy.
Speaker: How do you think about what that word is?
Speaker: Because part of our time here is we want to call people into the world of advocacy.
Speaker: But what do we mean by that when we talk about it?
Speaker: What does that mean to you?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I did for me, it's kind of as simple as thinking that lawyers are advocates.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I've technically been an advocate most of my professional career, particularly when I was practicing.
Speaker: And it is you take a position, you know, and then you work towards that position.
Speaker: And, you know, I think you for what we're talking about now, part of it is you want to make sure that that position you're taking is based on truth, is based on real information.
Speaker: And I think the more that we're able to peel back and show that
Speaker: that what we're told, particularly in mainstream media, you know, are the answers are, you know, for us to be safe.
Speaker: It means that we need to have so many police and so many people incarcerated and that they are bad people that we need to protect from us, good people, which I think is also when I think about kind of how my Christianity informs, you know, the positions I take.
Speaker: I think that's another one is this distinction that exists in the system because it is an adversary system based on this premise that we must remove the bad.
Speaker: And that's just not, you know, we are all created in God's image, you know, and we all fall short.
Speaker: We are all sinners, you know, and then we all need his redeeming love.
Speaker: And so, you know, if I'm relying on that,
Speaker: just in my own personal life, like how can I continue to be part of something that one of its main tenants is this othering and this, you're different because of what you did.
Speaker: So, but I'd love to throw that question back to you, Sam, how you would define advocacy in some of these terms as we think about this journey.
Speaker: Mm-hmm, advocacy to me means that you are engaging both an issue and also that you're engaging people, right?
Speaker: I think it's both.
Speaker: I think if we're engaging an issue like the death penalty, ultimately we're talking about people too.
Speaker: So I think it's really helpful to think about, we're talking about groups of people, those who are incarcerated or an individual that someone might know who is within prison, but it's choosing to walk with that person and to advocate or to maybe even work on their behalf
Speaker: And or elevating that person so that they can be in a position of power to advocate and call.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So much of the work that you and I do that is beautiful and rich and deep is wanting to come alongside those who are affected by the system and engage and elevate their voices.
Speaker: Because there are some things in some spaces where I can talk and I'll be heard.
Speaker: And there are other places where I won't be.
Speaker: that somebody who is within the system can be.
Speaker: And so advocacy, it's walking beside, which is, right, isn't that an incredibly biblical thing, in order to bring someone to a realization and move someone from understanding into some kind of activism, some kind of engagement.
Speaker: But I wanted for us as Christians to really try to divorce this overlap of activism and advocacy, automatically meaning something partisan.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it's automatically affiliated with only a political party.
Speaker: It's not.
Speaker: I mean, we see Jesus being an advocate.
Speaker: We see Jesus doing those things within scripture.
Speaker: And as Christians, we're called to engage issues and people and injustice wherever we see it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We're called to seek the welfare of the city and whatever space that we're in and to respond to injustice like the Samaritan did in the parable.
Speaker: And so that requires me to engage individuals.
Speaker: And sometimes it requires me to engage issues as a whole.
Speaker: And that's that's advocacy.
Speaker: Now, that might be different than lobbying, right?
Speaker: There might be an increasingly political aspect of it.
Speaker: And it's also something to think about, I think, for someone to think, what does it look like for me to advocate as an individual?
Speaker: And then what does it look like maybe to do that as a group?
Speaker: What are ways maybe that a church or a pre-existing community like a church can advocate, right?
Speaker: How can we care for our local jail or prison or those that are coming in or what is work I can do?
Speaker: as an individual.
Speaker: So those are some of the distinctions that come to my mind.
Speaker: But I think about it's walking with and beside someone to provide what they need.
Speaker: And again, that parable of the Good Samaritan gives that model.
Speaker: I think of that and then I think of Matthew 18, typically the church discipline passage.
Speaker: But yet all that passage is about is how do we as a church community respond to conflict?
Speaker: And while we see there a pattern of you confront that person and their sin, and if that's rejected, you bring a person.
Speaker: If that's rejected, you bring it before the church.
Speaker: If that's rejected, that person's removed from community.
Speaker: But that removal doesn't have to be permanent.
Speaker: And that removal isn't punitive.
Speaker: Our system would make it punitive.
Speaker: Our system would cage and confine and remove.
Speaker: But that removal is done out of the love to keep the community safe from unrepentant sin.
Speaker: But that person, too, who did the harm.
Speaker: And yet the hand of hospitality is always offered to return.
Speaker: But that return is conditional.
Speaker: We must admit that.
Speaker: our sin and engage that and repent.
Speaker: But yet here's a community of love where you can do that.
Speaker: Our system doesn't enable any of those things.
Speaker: And that's why thinking of something like restorative justice of being able to create a space where you have the person who was harmed, the person who did the harm and the surrounding community to have a conversation, to think, what does repair look like?
Speaker: The very things that space requires of kind of peace and love and creativity and being able to admit a crime or a wrong, none of those things are really allowed by our system.
Speaker: So also in our work, Jami, we talk a lot about the difference of reform and transform and those being different things and both being important, right?
Speaker: But talking about advocacy, those are sometimes different spaces.
Speaker: So what are some of those differences of reform versus transform?
Speaker: I feel like the best example has literally been my own journey, right?
Speaker: So that work that I was doing at the Vera Institute of Justice that I described briefly, which is working with system actors, lead prosecutors who've been elected, going into their offices, training their staff, helping them write new policies, is all about how do we reform the existing system?
Speaker: How do we
Speaker: minimize the harm, how do we change it from within, you know, by electing folks whose values align more with their community, who understood that the system is actually not helping, it's not keeping us safe.
Speaker: Can we do something different in it?
Speaker: And that work is so important.
Speaker: It is because the system touches too many people, that one in 100 number.
Speaker: Too many people are still interacting with it that we can't just say, oh, well, forget that.
Speaker: We're going to go over here and build something else.
Speaker: although essentially that to me is a little bit of the goal, right?
Speaker: Of when we think about work that's more transformative.
Speaker: It is really understanding that we have to have the ability to imagine beyond what exists.
Speaker: And what I love about what we do is it gives the opportunity to take, to recognize that the existing system, the criminal legal system
Speaker: something that's rooted in racial oppression, rooted in this desire to control and oppress, essentially the formerly enslaved, but has continued to black and brown people today, to what would it mean to create solutions that are rooted in love, that are rooted in healing, that are rooted in that repair that you talked about that doesn't exist in the current system.
Speaker: You can be convicted, incarcerated,
Speaker: and never actually reckon what you did to someone because it's not required.
Speaker: And in fact, there's very little opportunity.
Speaker: You're not even allowed, you know, as to be in touch, you know, with the victim and the person who's caused the harm.
Speaker: So for me, when I think about the opportunity we have to think about transformation, it is what does it look like to address these issues?
Speaker: We again know what causes violence, but to do it from a place of love, to do it from a place
Speaker: where the healing of all those involved in the entire community can be the foundational core that we're using.
Speaker: And these things, you know, the thing that I think is important is this isn't that these solutions don't exist.
Speaker: They do exist.
Speaker: They've been here.
Speaker: Communities have always, particularly marginalized communities, had to navigate like violence and harm because so many choose not to engage with the system.
Speaker: Also navigating those drivers, you know, like if you know poverty, then there are so many ways that communities try to take care of each other.
Speaker: You know, if you know trauma, you know, it's why when sometimes a shooting happens or an incident happens, you have the folks who show up right there to surround the family to see what they need, you know, understanding that trauma can lead to things, you know, so.
Speaker: I think what excites me about our work is not that we need to go out and create something that doesn't exist.
Speaker: Our job is to elevate them to those policymakers, to those budget makers, and get those other responses, community-based responses, elevated, resourced, and so that we can change the narrative about how we talk about violence and harm, that we can talk about it in a way
Speaker: that actually centers responses that addresses those drivers and not just that what we continue to do anytime there's something high profile, the response is, oh, that means we need more police.
Speaker: We need stiffer punishments.
Speaker: But that actually has not made us safer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, and we know that.
Speaker: I mean, we have the data to show that.
Speaker: And that's one exciting and frustrating thing to talk about with people, something like the death penalty.
Speaker: And also, I'll say a couple of things, and then we'll move to some questions because I want people to be able to speak up here.
Speaker: But if we're thinking of something like the death penalty, right, we know that it does not deter crime.
Speaker: In fact, it increases it.
Speaker: We know that it's done in an exorbitantly expensive way.
Speaker: We know that it's done in a torturous manner.
Speaker: 2022 was called the year of the botched execution, where so many were
Speaker: horrifically messed up.
Speaker: And we know that it's done in a racist manner.
Speaker: It's done in a discriminatory manner.
Speaker: So by any logical or secular measure of execution, we know it's not working.
Speaker: But if someone just wants to punish, it does that.
Speaker: And that's the place that I really want to lean in with Christians is, is that a good knee-jerk reaction to harm, to continue that cycle of violence with punishment?
Speaker: Or does the cross of Jesus and the resurrection, does that free us from requiring punishment here on earth?
Speaker: Do we have a God who can and should judge, but yet we are called towards forgiveness, which doesn't mean that there's not a measure of accountability, right?
Speaker: I want people to acknowledge the harm.
Speaker: I want people to be required to have repair before coming back into a community.
Speaker: And I want things to change institutionally so that harm can't happen again.
Speaker: I want all of those things to happen, but none of those things require necessarily punishment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You talked earlier about truth.
Speaker: And I had this vision of a colleague from when I was teaching, talking about almost like you're getting your line of sight together and trying to live in light of reality.
Speaker: Here's reality in my view.
Speaker: And I want those things to be in line.
Speaker: And so, so much of our work is calling people to one, see the system for what it is and to be real about what it can't do and what it's not doing.
Speaker: And then to live in light of that truth.
Speaker: If we know the system is big,
Speaker: and torturous and doesn't work and actually increases violence, well, then we've got to do something different.
Speaker: And what we want done that's different isn't just made up.
Speaker: It's happening in communities across the nation and across the world.
Speaker: Even we know that it's there.
Speaker: We know that it works.
Speaker: So that imaginative spark is there.
Speaker: We're calling people to something that's already happening.
Speaker: I just really, really want Christians in churches engaging it more and more.
Speaker: Because we are fueled by love, because we get to live in light of the gospel, because we don't have to always pursue aggressively a bodily safety.
Speaker: We can put ourselves to a degree at risk and redefine safety, which might be stretching us.
Speaker: I think of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Speaker: When they talk about, they say, he's good, but not safe.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Public safety doesn't have to require punishment, police or prisons, but yet it might require us to put ourselves in position of more vulnerability for the sake of the other.
Speaker: There's so much we could keep going.
Speaker: We'll be right back.
Speaker: But first, a word from our sponsor.
Speaker: Hello, I'm Paul Miles, President and CEO of We Raise Foundation.
Speaker: We Raise invests in people and organizations that serve at the intersection of poverty, violence, and inequality.
Speaker: We start by acknowledging that change begins with we.
Speaker: We are in this together, and it's going to take our love and our compassion and dedication to solve the problems facing communities today.
Speaker: We invite you to be part of that with us
Speaker: and encourage you to visit WeRaise.org to find out how you can become involved and be a partner with WeRaise.
Speaker: So I want to pause a second.
Speaker: And I know there were a couple of questions in the chat, but I also want to see if anybody wants to put something in the chat now or if anybody wants to come off camera and ask anything live.
Speaker: I'll kind of pause for a moment and see if anything shows up and then we'll keep going and talk about.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So what do we do?
Speaker: What does advocacy do?
Speaker: We'll get there, too.
Speaker: But let's see if there are any questions first.
Speaker: And if you didn't see, maybe you can check those in the chat that were there.
Speaker: Anybody can come off camera if you want to ask anything live.
Speaker: Oh, I see this question from Erica Norris just asking.
Speaker: It says, is there a means of bringing information perspective to prosecutors and should we be writing letters?
Speaker: Thank you for that question, Erica.
Speaker: Absolutely, because
Speaker: The vast majority of prosecutors in this country are elected.
Speaker: So when Sam said so much of what happens happens in our name, you know, they they literally say on behalf of the people, you know, when a prosecutor introduces themselves in court.
Speaker: So you have a say in who that prosecutor is.
Speaker: So one, just being engaged in the elections and learning a little bit about their platform that they're running on.
Speaker: And then, yeah, there are so many examples of communities that are engaging directly with their prosecutors, you know, because they have leverage.
Speaker: They're going to run again.
Speaker: They need to be responsive to the folks that elected them.
Speaker: to bring specifically even cases to their attention, but to bring policies to their attention.
Speaker: So absolutely, it's important.
Speaker: And because the vast majority are elected in this country, there's real opportunity.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Other questions, again, feel free to come off camera and ask or put that in the chat.
Speaker: While we wait on those, and feel free to jump in, friends, and to put anything in the chat as we talk, we also want people to start thinking about, all right, what are some specific tools in ways that we as Christians can advocate for change?
Speaker: How can we reduce the violence of the system and how can we build something else?
Speaker: And
Speaker: One helpful frame that I have found for thinking about that is trying to think in terms of geography or locality and think about are there a national, a state, and a local piece.
Speaker: And so are there ways that I can engage on a national level
Speaker: things that relate to criminal justice, the criminal legal system, things in my state and things that are local.
Speaker: And one, I would say that part of our job is to help engage that and to help with that.
Speaker: So one, like, let me offer myself to you to help walk with you and to think about how can you and your space do that, especially as a Christian, especially with a church.
Speaker: So one, that frame might be helpful to think through.
Speaker: Are there national issues that I can think through?
Speaker: We've talked about the death penalty, right?
Speaker: There is still a federal death penalty.
Speaker: Our last president executed 13 individuals, which was more than the previous 60 years that had occurred before.
Speaker: And so this is something that's still very much a reality.
Speaker: We still have the federal death penalty.
Speaker: We still have the military death penalty.
Speaker: There are lots of other federal ways and issues of
Speaker: ways that you can engage thinking about the criminal legal system or your specific state, wherever you are.
Speaker: Jami talked about states that have repealed the death penalty.
Speaker: 23 have, 27 haven't.
Speaker: So almost half of our country still has the death penalty at the state level.
Speaker: Virginia was the first state.
Speaker: that was a former Confederate state or the first state in the South to repeal.
Speaker: And that's significant and hopefully a turning point.
Speaker: But there are on a state level, all sorts of ways to advocate for community violence intervention, for restorative justice, or to repeal certain things like the death penalty.
Speaker: And then your local space, right?
Speaker: Local space and advocacy.
Speaker: One, there's lots of ways through local government you can advocate and engage.
Speaker: And what does it look like to call for certain things through your local jail or prison?
Speaker: But also just as a church,
Speaker: How can you live in a way that loves those who are in need?
Speaker: What would it look like as a church to adopt someone who is returning from a jail or prison?
Speaker: What would it look like to almost adopt that person while they're in so that they know you and come into a community?
Speaker: How can we as a people engage within our local space?
Speaker: What does it look like?
Speaker: So those three frames I think of as a lens to think about how can I jump in?
Speaker: Think of the nation, the state and locally.
Speaker: I also see some other things coming in.
Speaker: So I'll pause and look at the chat and again, give some people some time to respond here.
Speaker: I see Christine Warner, who's with a friend of ours with the Matthew 25 initiative.
Speaker: And she's talking about for church members who want to engage, it often can feel really overwhelming and that there are some faith based organizations like Kairos and others who talk about what this looks like.
Speaker: And for the evangelical network as well, there's the Catholic mobilizing network.
Speaker: There are groups that are faith based that are wanting to accompany individuals or churches in what that work looks like.
Speaker: And so absolutely, those are out there.
Speaker: And what does it look like to have kind of a low ramp?
Speaker: Yeah, that kind of one one ask for someone to move into that space.
Speaker: And I see a question in the chat that came from Facebook Live that's specifically asking about former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin.
Speaker: And for folks who maybe aren't in that area or haven't followed closely, he was elected as a, you know, the term is kind of progressive prosecutors, one of those prosecutors who ran on a platform of change.
Speaker: And then after being in office, it wasn't long, I feel like a couple of years, there was a recall effort
Speaker: that was successful and successfully recalled him from office.
Speaker: And so the question is, you know, what did, you know, I appreciate about his tenure, what might've been done differently in his tenure with different outcomes.
Speaker: One of the things when he, when I first heard about him running for office, I think I literally remember just being so excited because he brought proximity.
Speaker: He is the child of parents who had been incarcerated.
Speaker: And so for a lot of his life, he was raised by other family members because his parents had been incarcerated.
Speaker: And then he came, you know, ended up being a public defender and working in the system and then decided to run to hold this role that could influence policy at the city level.
Speaker: And I think because proximity is so key,
Speaker: that just knowing that about his background was really exciting to me.
Speaker: And then he did, he brought in a bunch of changes, I think.
Speaker: And, you know, to keep this shorter, because I want to make sure we have enough time.
Speaker: I think essentially what led to his recall is the loss of the narrative, you know, so, you know, change that there are, you
Speaker: There are just some folks who, when you say you want to change something, who just don't want to change.
Speaker: And there can be a lot of reasons for that.
Speaker: But our othering of folks who've caused harm, our essential sort of embracing of a punishment purpose for our system, when you push back against that, you know, there are
Speaker: I will name police unions.
Speaker: There are others who will rise up and they will get organized and they will get funded and they will come after you.
Speaker: Chesa Boudin's not the only person who's had to deal with a recall attempt or other attacks because he brought a different message.
Speaker: But I think part of how you can get enough voters to agree with that recall attempt is the narrative piece.
Speaker: And it is why I appreciate that being such a key part of our work at EJUSA
Speaker: is because we have to be able to tell the stories that compete against this harmful narrative of these are bad people doing bad things that we must throw away.
Speaker: also do a better job of uplifting the responses that are working.
Speaker: And I think in San Francisco, there just wasn't enough of the, here are the results of his divert, you know, when he diverted this person, this is what happened for them, you know, and this is how they were able to get reconnected with community and be, you know, contributing person in the San Francisco community
Speaker: But all you hear and all you see often in media are the, you know, it's the, if it bleeds, it leads.
Speaker: It's this person got hurt.
Speaker: There was a murder.
Speaker: There was a shooting.
Speaker: And then there's this cry, you know, they're looking for someone to blame.
Speaker: It's that DA over there and their soft on crime policies that led to this without real, any real interrogation of what actually drives violence and how ineffective our responses have been to violence.
Speaker: So I'll stop there because I know we are running short on time.
Speaker: Yeah, we'll start to close out in the next few minutes.
Speaker: So we'll say a couple things and then we'll pray and close out.
Speaker: One is I want to show you all, and we can likely send this to you in an email that comes with some resources after, but I want to point you to a church and justice tool and something that we've developed at Evangelical Network.
Speaker: And what it is meant to be is a tool that goes through a baseline theology of justice, and then it ends with
Speaker: a couple dozen resources of places and organizations and resources that already exist to help people think about the criminal legal system or restorative justice specifically or racial equity.
Speaker: And so that tool is meant to equip specifically faith communities with responding to this.
Speaker: So in a way, it will help you think through those lenses.
Speaker: of the nation, the state, and your local space.
Speaker: What is it that we can do?
Speaker: And then I'll offer myself and would love to talk with you all and to accompany you and or your church as you think about all of those things and what it looks like.
Speaker: I'll put my email there.
Speaker: But part of what I do and want to do is to walk with you, both to learn from you and also to help lead and guide and connect you to those places where you as a person of faith within your community can
Speaker: What do you do?
Speaker: How do you live in light of these things?
Speaker: How do you live in line, as Jami said, of knowing what truth is?
Speaker: So would love to talk with you all further.
Speaker: I'll also also want to point out, I'm going to try to share my screen here and show you the Locked in Solidarity Week.
Speaker: so that you can see other things that are happening this week and know that this event again is part of a lot that's going on on a broader level and we talked about this just a little bit but also the focus this week is on mental health and trauma from being from going all the way through the system so this link here and we can probably put that in the chat and it gives you the preaching god and some of the theology behind this i would really encourage you to look at that theology that comes from two pastors one of whom is incarcerated
Speaker: on death row within in the state of Tennessee.
Speaker: But if you scroll down, excuse me, you'll see some of the other events that are coming up this week.
Speaker: There's one tomorrow about education behind bars.
Speaker: We've got a check-in event for the Mass Incarceration Affinity Network.
Speaker: If you're a CCDA member and want to be part of that group and keep up with some of these efforts, you can join that.
Speaker: There have been other events that have happened already this week.
Speaker: You can
Speaker: pursue and see if there's a recording for those.
Speaker: I can say that there is for sure of this one because I helped do it with the in the movement with Dr. Jason Sexton and we'll be happy to share a recording of that as we think about the overlap of church and prisons and the history of that.
Speaker: So we'll call your attention to all of those things.
Speaker: But again, we are grateful that you are here.
Speaker: You being here is a step towards wanting to move from understanding into engagement and everybody's journey to justice
Speaker: is really different.
Speaker: And so we want to make space for that.
Speaker: We want to give you space and time to process that.
Speaker: But we also would love to accompany you within all of that.
Speaker: So let me end and pause there.
Speaker: And Jami, can you pray for us?
Speaker: And then we'll send people out into their places and spaces.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Let us pray.
Speaker: Dear God, we just come just so grateful, Lord.
Speaker: We thank you for your love.
Speaker: We thank you, God, just for all that you provide and the way you care for us.
Speaker: Dr. J. J. J.
Speaker: to represent you in the world, dear God.
Speaker: We just thank you.
Speaker: I just pray a blessing over all those who are in attendance, dear God, that you bless them, their families, their places of work, and provide them whatever that they need.
Speaker: Father, we just thank you.
Speaker: And it's in Jesus' name we ask it all.
Speaker: Amen.
Speaker: Amen.
Speaker: Thanks, everyone, for joining.
Speaker: And again, we'd love to continue the conversation.
Speaker: But thank you and blessings on your day.
Speaker: Thank you for listening to the CCDA podcast and big thanks to Sam Heath and Jami Hodge for their workshop, Journey to Justice, advocacy that moves beyond the criminal legal system and builds what we need.
Speaker: Hello, I'm Paul Miles, president and CEO of We Raise Foundation.
Speaker: We raise invests in people and organizations that serve at the intersection of poverty, violence and inequality.
Speaker: We start by acknowledging the change begins with we.
Speaker: We are in this together.
Speaker: And it's going to take our love and our compassion and dedication to solve the problems facing communities today.
Speaker: We invite you to be part of that with us and encourage you to visit WeRaise.org to find out how you can become involved and be a partner with WeRaise.
Speaker: Thank you for listening to the CCDA podcast.
Speaker: Don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker: This podcast is produced by Dan Portnoy in association with Scott Overbeck.
