Listenin' to R & B

Since moving down here, I’ve gotten hooked on Rick & Bubba’s morning talk radio show on Y102 (the equivalent of Z100 in NYC – it mostly plays Top 40 hits). The following is a list of topics from Rick & Bubba’s morning radio show:

1) Rick (or was it Bubba?) got too competitive at a Church carnival and broke his son’s Sunday school teacher’s nose while boxing on a moonwalk.

2) A call-in segment on being aware of and preventing internet predators

3) Why moms and dads have different parenting responsibilities: Dads are the playmates and Moms are the caretakers. (This message was affirmed by a university student who called in and informed listeners this is exactly what she learned in her family life and parenting class)

4) Effusive praise for Geraldo, who stated on the air that we’re going to be in Iraq a long time, so anyone that has a problem with the war should “get over it” (Note: I haven’t independently confirmed Geraldo’s statement);

5) Extensive critical analysis of Connie Chung’s farewell parody song (which was indeed atrocious) on her weekend cable news show with Maury Povich.

6) Interspersed throughout has been ongoing discussion of the World Cup results (Rick or Bubba, I forget which, isn’t a big fan of soccer, but loves tennis)

Admittedly, I’ve been impressed with how substantive R&B’s content is – they’re both pretty well versed on world events and are certainly entertaining. I was holding out some hope that R&B would offer at least a taste of liberalism, especially since the entertainment industry and most of all, morning shock jocks, generally trends toward liberal and boundary-busting ideas. But my hope went out the window on the same day that R&B started singing Geraldo’s praises, which was the same day that they hailed Ronald Regan for prophesying the Star Wars missile defense system and then proceeded to call Democrats multiple variations of “whiners”, “whiny liberals” and “folks that complain a whole lot but don’t do anything”. Listening to R&B is when I have my “duh moments” that not everyone in this country thinks of progressivism as a positive trait. By the same token it also gives me a window into what politicians mean when they stress “family values” – a lifestyle that is family-safe and centric, that is humorous (with clean jokes, of course), where men and women stick to traditional gender roles and where faith plays a significant part of one’s outlook.

Upward "Mobile"-ity

Sparky and I decided to take an adventure this past weekend and to meet up in between New Orleans and Montgomery. After looking at a map we figured that Mobile, Al was the best destination, located right on the border of Alabama and Mississippi and sitting on Mobile Bay, which opens into the Gulf of Mexico. Our choice turned out to be a great one and, somewhat to my surprise, Mobile is a tourist friendly city with quite a bit of activity going on.

Saturday morning (which also happened to be the fifteenth anniversary of my Bar Mitzvah!) we checked out the local synagogue, where we were greeted with warm hospitality and a standing invitation to come back anytime. Though a lot of similarities exist between synagogues in the northeast and synagogues down south in terms of the liturgical components of the service, the two congregations I’ve visited down here differ from what I’m used to back home. Part of the reason for this difference stems from the fact that the congregations here are relatively small and don’t have a lot of young people, so when an unfamiliar young couple walks into the room, the congregation pounces on them with open arms. Our warm reception was also a product of traditional southern hospitality. At the synagogue in New Orleans, for example, Sparky received a bunch of business and calling cards from women who were only too happy to offer her a drive over to the synagogue or a place for dinner when she was in town.

Another reason for the difference between synagogues here and those up north, is that down south, Jewish communities find themselves in the extreme minority; so much so that a common question to ask here when meeting someone is “what church do you belong to?” (I haven’t yet figured out my answer to this question). With such a dominant Christian culture, synagogues represent the only way to celebrate one’s Jewish heritage, or even to acknowledge it.

One similarity between synagogues in the south and north may has a touch of irony associated with it. Regular church attendance is expected here, and as a result, churches provide a large part of communities’ social fabric. People that go to synagogue are seeking the social outlet they don’t have by not belonging to a church. While synagogues up north are also centers of social activity, most have become that way because the communities are so substantial, not necessarily because they find a need to compete with church culture.

The last difference I noticed about synagogue this past weekend compared to the one I go to at home, was that grits were served for lunch! It wasn’t quite like having challah and herring, but the grits were still pretty tasty.

On a related note, I’ve been keeping track of the number of grit dishes I’ve eaten since coming down to Alabama, and the total count thus far is two orders of regular grits and one order of cheese grits. Definitely a little disappointed with my grit consumption. I also have a sizeable bag of raw grits waiting to be cooked sitting on my desk, courtesy of my fellow intern. Next up on my menu is fried grits….

Getting back to my weekend – after services, Sparky and I enjoyed the rest of what Mobile and its environs had to offer. The city’s history is extraordinarily colorful and the architecture is also amazing, except for the fact that there are way too many fast food places located downtown. Mobile was French Louisiana’s first capital and featured this country's first Mardi Gras, but eventually lost its prestige when the capital moved to New Orleans. France ultimately ceded Mobile to Great Britain, who turned it back into a major port and economic center, thereby making it a prime strategic target of other colonial countries, most notably Spain who overtook the city during the Revolutionary War. Finally, in 1813 the United States defeated the Spanish and gained control of the city. Today, remnants of the original French fort protecting the gateway to the city from Mobile Bay still exist, and all different styles of houses and buildings line the downtown area (many of them are unoccupied). Saturday night Sparky and I went out for a night on the town and found out that the bars and restaurants are crowded with a healthy contingent of yuppies and university/high school students.

On Sunday, Sparky and I hit Gulf Shores, which is the small stretch of coastline that Alabama claims along the Gulf of Mexico (right next to the Florida panhandle beaches). White sands, warm water, a hot sun and great company – perfect for a relaxing day on the beach!

That pretty much sums up my weekend. Work this week is of course interesting as always, made all the more so by the fact that we’re running a World Cup office pool. As of yesterday I was tied for second place along with all the other interns, but that might change if the US doesn’t win a game already!

Holman Prison; June 15, 2006

I just got back from a visit to death row.

Holman Prison is located about 115 miles outside of Montgomery near the town of Atmore, Alabama. The maximum security prison was constructed in 1968 under the administration of Governor Lurleen Wallace, wife and successor to the infamous Governor George Wallace (known for his stance against desegregation), and the only female governor to ever be elected in this state. Today, the facility houses about 830 general inmates (many of whom are serving life without parole) and 168 death row prisoners.

I emptied my pockets and left the contents in the car, taking only a photo ID and a note pad. The tower guards sitting at the entrance pressed the buzzer to let us in. We walked inside to the reception area and a guard materialized and patted me down. Then the door slid open, kind of like I would have imagined from the movies I’ve seen, and we walked into a room containing about 20 tables, a couple of snack machines and surrounded by glass walls.

In 2000, at the age of 19, BB was convicted of capital murder because he shot and killed the man he was trying to rob. This morning, he walked into the room with the glass windows; I shook his hand and, with the EJI staff attorney leading the way, helped to explain the next steps of his appeals process. This explanation was important because since his conviction 6 years ago, BB has not been visited by an attorney. It’s a bit unsettling talking so banally with someone about trying to save his life, especially when the odds aren’t good. I imagine it’s what a doctor feels like talking to a patient whose cancer has already metastasized.

When I walked into the prison, out of the corner of my eye I saw a plaque with the quote “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” To me, the shadow of death took the form of a pit in my stomach as I sat there, having a conversation with a guy who looked not a day older than 20, who was quick to smile and who was genuinely considerate and happy to see us. The main question he asked as we went along was “how much time are the appeals going to take?”, which is a loaded question that doesn’t have a good answer no matter which way you cut it, though in his case the process is still in its early stages.

For more than a half hour after we got the legal material out of the way, we chatted about everything from the NBA finals to his favorite college teams to the family members he keeps in touch with and why he likes the heat of Alabama and Louisiana compared to the cold of the northeast, where he used to live. He became most animated when telling us about the annual death row-wide competition that’s coming up, where teams of prisoners compete against each other in chess, basketball, volleyball and dominoes in order to win a prize of ice cream, soda and, most important of all, bragging rights. We only left when he had to go back to his prison cell for the twice-daily prison-wide count that takes place.

Though I know BB unlawfully took someone’s life, sitting there it was hard to envision the 60 seconds when the gun went off as anything more than a reckless and tragic mistake brought on with the help of a childhood marred by physical abuse and the deaths of BB’s immediate family. Sitting there, it was also hard to think that no matter what happens with his appeals, BB is virtually guaranteed of spending the rest of his life behind bars in a jail cell in Alabama without air conditioning, competing for ice cream and a soda.

As I wrote earlier, I can’t imagine the loss and grieving that the victim’s family has suffered since the day he was killed. But today - after I realized first-hand that the person convicted of committing the crime is not defined by his life’s worst moment (that’s one of EJI’s mottos) - I understood that execution is not the solution to honor the victim’s life or to attaining justice. Perhaps I would have reacted differently had I met a death row prisoner who was a habitual violent offender, or who visibly displayed his evil designs.

What does evil look like after all? If the person sitting in front of me today is considered the face of evil, and is deemed to be so dangerous to society that his life must be terminated, then I can only look in the mirror and conclude that evil resides within me and my friends too, because in different circumstances BB and I would have no problem hanging out and becoming friends outside of the barbed wire fences that surrounded us.

That makes me think of Arlo Guthrie’s song “Alice’s Restaurant”, where Guthrie is arrested for littering and is placed on the same bench as violent offenders - “Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me!” And a few minutes later, Guthrie sings how they all “shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talking about all kinds of groovy things.” The point is that maybe we’re all the same inside – we’re all sitting on the same bench – except that different people act out their bad parts while others keep it contained.

Or I could drop the whole evil stuff and conclude that I’m not an evil person nor did I meet the face of evil today - only a friendly kid who would cream me in basketball and/or chess if I ever played him and who is paying too high a price for his mistakes, which originated through no fault of his own way before he pulled the gun on an innocent victim in a mall parking lot. To the extent that it's possible to generalize about evil people, I believe that the real ones might be serial criminals, sociopaths or even perhaps the few individuals who enforce laws and punishments in the false name of justice.

The answer is probably a little bit of both. I guess I’ll just have to go listen to Alice’s Restaurant and think about it.

Kosher Cajun

(Editor’s note: Names have been changed to protect individual privacy.)

This past weekend I went to visit Sparky in the Big Easy, New Orleans. Much to my surprise the drive was pretty quick - a straight 4.5 hour shot southwest on the Interstate through Alabama, Mississippi right to the edge of Louisiana, where NOLA is located. After spending spring break in N’awlins it was good to be back and of course to get the chance to visit Sparky, who’s lucky enough to be spending the summer there.

The city itself is truly unique, managing to combine a rare blend of funky music, spicy food, European old city houses with southern plantation style mansions, and of course a hefty serving of “soul”. Though I’d already gotten to see how New Orleans has been recovering from Katrina when I was there a few months ago, this past weekend I had the chance to revisit the Lower 9th Ward, which is the area most devastated by the storm. I saw several people working on reconstructing their houses in the lower 9th, and even some “For Sale” signs, though my portfolio manager tells me it’s probably not a good move to buy there right now.

For the most part, however, the Lower 9th Ward remains a ghost town, and I’ve never seen such an enormous magnitude of destruction concentrated in one place. Driving down the empty streets there, it’s easy to imagine that a huge bomb simply exploded overturning houses, cars and anything else in its way. In some ways a bomb is better than the reality of what really happened – ultimately, the people who were most disenfranchised in the city, the poor and predominately black residents of the lower 9th, lived in poorly constructed houses that were just waiting to be blown down, either by the big bad wolf or by the inevitable Hurricane. Moreover, enfranchisement doesn’t come at the snap of one’s fingers, even if that “snap” involved the complete destruction of a whole population’s entire livelihood. Most of the 9th ward residents haven’t returned to New Orleans because they have nowhere to come back to, and in the meantime, the city has been twiddling its thumbs about what to do.

On a lighter note, I don’t think I’ve quite reached “foodie” status, but Sparky and I spent a good part of the weekend enjoying New Orleans’ cuisine. On Saturday night we checked out a place called Jacques-Imos, a small hot spot in the western part of the city. The wait is typically up to 2 hours and people just hang out by the bar until they’re seated. On the way to our table we walked through the kitchen where a whole lotta’ frying was going on – all different kinds of fish, chicken, shrimp – and it smelled amazing. The highlight of the meal besides the waiter who was literally walking around in his cycling outfit – spandex shorts, helmet, glasses and blinking reflectors all over himself – was the fried green tomatoes, which were awesome!

The next morning after having only partially recovered from our dining experience the night before, we checked out a local diner for my first taste of grits since coming down south! I can’t believe I waited a whole week to have them!! Breakfast consisted of a healthy portion of grits, French toast and eggs – and we went the “light” route. Most people added sausage, ham or bacon on top of all that. In case you’re wondering what grits taste like, they’re pretty much a bland version of cream of wheat, except that they’re made with corn (and if you’ve seen My Cousin Vinny you know that they take 20 minutes to make). You can add anything to them to give them some flavor, such as butter, salt, salsa, syrup, etc and they washed down the eggs pretty well.

That wasn’t the end of the eating fest that Sparky and I went on. Right after breakfast we got into the car and headed about 20 minutes out of the city to check out Kosher Cajun, the only kosher New Orleans style restaurant in the city (we heard about it when we went to Synagogue on Saturday). I was dreaming about going there literally all weekend. So much of New Orleans’ food is off limits to me (because I keep kosher) that I couldn’t wait to try the types of food whose aroma literally wafts through the air as I walked through the streets. Though most of Kosher Cajun’s fare consists of New York deli sandwiches and knishes, they had kosher Po Boy sandwiches (The name Po Boy originated in 1929, when a New Orleans restaurateur started serving striking railroad workers, who he called “Poor Boys”, free sandwiches which eventually became known as Po’ Boys. They were originally made with baguettes and French Fried potatoes in the middle to keep costs down but gradually they evolved to be made with meat and fish.). KJ’s also had kosher gumbo, which is the equivalent of kosher chullent. I took both options for the road and, 10 pounds heavier than when I first arrived, I got in the car and drove back to ‘Bama.

The first thing I did when I returned was go for a run in 95 degree heat. Felt like running through a sauna, but it felt great to get out and expend some energy. Since then, the work week has been interesting and exciting and has included an office outing to the final home season game of the local arena football team, the Montgomery Maulers. I realized I was in Alabama when I walked into the arena just in time for the prayer starting off the game, thanking God for good attendance and healthy athletes and hailing Jesus. Then the lights came up, the color guard retreated, and 3 Harley Davidsons roared out of the building. Final score: Montgomery Maulers 42, Charleston Sand Sharks, 30. Way to go home team!!!

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Why am I here? It’s a fair question considering that fighting the death penalty was never a cause I championed, nor does it have anything to with my previous career. Besides the obvious answer of wanting to be in a new and exciting place, some experiences I’ve had over the last few days capture the reasons why I felt like working in Montgomery was the right choice for me.

My first project involves helping to prepare a petition of certiorari to the Supreme Court (to get the Court to review the defendant’s conviction/sentence) in a case that features a murder committed by an African American who suffered significant and continuous abuse from the time he was a young kid to the time he committed murder at the age of 19. He also witnessed or experienced the deaths of all 4 of his caregivers - his mother, both his grandparents and his uncle - within a relatively short period of time.

Is justice being served by sentencing a 19 year old with such a history to death? Take away one of those factors - his race - and his chances of getting a lighter sentence rise considerably in this state. Take away the years of abuse he endured and he would have been less disposed to even thinking of such a crime. Take away the fact that he was charged as an adult and you have a young 19 year old who has maliciously taken away another individual’s life, but who also has a lifetime to repent for his actions and to evolve into a contributing - or at least non-threatening - member of society. To me, justice is clearly not being served in this case by killing the defendant. Yet, his chances of living right now are slim to none. My work - and the uphill battle associated with it - is one of the reasons I came here for the summer - to shatter the idea that America’s democracy needs no repair and to find out ways that I can truly help fix it.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to travel to Atlanta to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to hear attorneys argue on behalf of their death row clients. Going to the court was really interesting and was an experience in it of itself - from hearing the court clerk open the session by asking God to show His Grace upon the court, to seeing the judges grill the attorneys on the finer points of their cases. But what really captured the court field trip for me was the realization that these cases don’t just involve a description of the actual crime surrounded in a legal brief by a whole bunch of legalese. On the contrary, these cases involve real people getting killed on both sides of the table.

I apologize for being graphic, but this is part of my point - in Case #1, the defendant killed the woman he was dating, who was deaf, and strangled her two sons, ages 5 and 4 respectively. In Case #2, the defendant was convicted of getting drunk and then taking a knife, stabbing his victim repeatedly, slitting her throat and disemboweling her. Even sitting in a court room hearing lawyers argue dispassionately about the facts of such horrific crimes was difficult for me to stomach. I could talk myself blue in the face about how the death penalty does nothing to deter future crimes, but when it all comes down to it - if I was a witness to the crime or a relative of the victims, could I honestly say that I would not want to see the defendants’ lives taken in exchange for the lives they had no right to take?? Would I care that an African American defendant would have a higher chance of getting capital punishment than a white defendant? Or would I care that the defendant was subjected to a history of abuse or mental illness??

In an ideal world, I hope I would, but realistically I think I’d be too caught up in the grieving process to say that I had such priorities. This question brings to mind Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis’s infamous flub when he was asked whether he would support the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife. He said no, and then segued into talking about how effective his state’s crime policies had been. Is that all he could think of when asked how he would react to someone killing his wife?? What would I do??

Though I’ve already had one nightmare on this topic, and I’m sure that more are in store for me, one of the reasons I’m here this summer is to challenge myself to think about what my answer to the question is; to answer what I would be willing to personally sacrifice for a system of justice that I support; and to wrestle with uncomfortable, but truly important, dilemmas.

I'm Comin' to Alabama with a Banjo on my Knee

So, after a short weekend at home in MD with the family and a night of watching My Cousin Vinny and To Kill a Mockingbird, I'm off to a summer of adventures in Alabama this summer. Who knew that the excitement would start as early as my plane ride down south?? From Atlanta, I got rerouted through Columbus (in Georgia...I didn't know Georgia had a Columbus either) and then got driven down to Montgomery by a friendly, but clueless, Delta employee. Still waiting for my luggage to arrive, but all in all I'm happy to be here and am already starting to get settled in.

Though I don't plan on returning to the Big Apple with a southern twang in my voice, I have some aspirations to meet while I spend the summer shvitzing down here (listed in no particular order):

-come home with scientific evidence that, in fact, all country music really does sound the same

-sing Hallelujah and shout Amens at a Southern Baptist karaoke night

-put myself in the shoes of a red-state, card-carrying NRA member, god-fearing, socially conservative Christian American

-see how far our country has come and how much farther we have to go since the day Martin Luther King walked from Selma to Montgomery

-comprehend how and why the death penalty experiment in our country has failed

-learn how to play slide guitar

-eat enough grits to advertise myself as the first human alternative to fuel because I'll be...um, farting so much ethanol

-Be able to strum Sweet Home Alabama and mean it

I'm looking forward to a summer in the Deep South!