Reverend Robert Graetz

Unfortunately, this week has been tough, and I sit here tonight with swirling emotions struggling to write this blog. Though my summer has been an amazing one, as I hopefully have conveyed on these pages, not every day is easy. Besides the complicated nature of the work in which I’ve been engaged, I realize the difficulty of living in a place and culture that is virtually foreign to me: relationships with the people I love and care about can change while I’m gone; phone and email conversations are not substitutes for the comfort of friends and family back home; and even the up-to-the minute nature of online news doesn’t replace the experience of living through the headlines, whether they be good or bad.

I wanted to briefly share an inspirational experience that I had tonight. In 1955, Reverend Robert Graetz, who is white, was called to become the minister of Montgomery’s all-black Trinity Church, fresh out of seminary in Ohio. Several months after his appointment, an African American woman, who used Rev. Graetz’s church for youth meetings, was arrested for refusing to leave her seat in the front of the bus. Rev. Graetz called Rosa Parks that night to confirm what had taken place, and the next day stood up in his pulpit and became one of the first ministers, white or black, to publicly support the Montgomery bus boycott. Following his declaration of support, Rev. Graetz became one of the leaders of the boycott, an active participant in the civil rights movement, and a close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Earlier tonight I had the opportunity to hear Rev. Graetz speak in his adopted hometown of Montgomery (he’s now semi-retired and living in Ohio). In the audience sat a virtual “who’s who” of civil rights activists: Judge Thomas Gray, whose brother, Fred Gray, is the renowned civil rights attorney made famous when he represented the bus boycotters in court; Reva Harris, a close friend of Dr. King’s, whose husband organized an African American taxi service during the boycott and who provided shelter to 31 Freedom Riders when they came to Montgomery; the niece of E.D. Nixon, considered the “Father of the Civil Rights Movement”; and finally, several members of Trinity Church who actively participated in the boycott.

Though I have experienced something of this sort in my own family, for one of the first times in my life, I observed people treat others of a different race than their own as if they were all part of the same family. The God that Rev. Graetz invoked was not the God of war or of divisiveness, but of compassion, of unity and of respect. Rev. Graetz spoke of the need for the Church and for society to be more accepting of homosexuality, and related to the audience that his oldest son, who was gay, died of AIDS in the 1980s. His son came out, however, with the full support of his family, which I can only imagine as being extremely difficult given the fact that the Lutheran Church only welcomed gays and lesbians in the 1990s.

Rev. Graetz also imparted his advice to the next generation, emphasizing not only the importance of knowing our collective history, but also the need for people to exercise the right to vote. This advice was particularly relevant given President Bush’s signing of the Voting Rights Act today, but also had special meaning for me since I recently visited the Voting Rights Museum in Selma. On a related topic, Rev. Graetz discussed what it means to put one’s life on the line for a cause in which he believed. As he put it, he and the other civil rights leaders knew that some of them would die fighting for their rights, but decided that they were willing to do so in order to be able to change the lives of the generation that succeeded them. (Rev. Graetz’s house was bombed several times in 1956 and 1957).

Though his name may not carry the instant recognition associated with Dr. King’s, meeting Rev. Graetz tonight reinforced the fact that my work here is a continuation of the reform that he first advocated along with Dr. King and the other civil rights leaders of the 1950s and ‘60s in Montgomery. We have come a long way since the days of Martin Luther King’s and Rev. Graetz’s heroic deeds, but we still have farther to go.

P.S. Grit Count = 6 regular grits, 2 cheese grits.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

What does it feel like to walk through a tunnel that has no light at the end of it?

On Thursday, I was back in prison for another visit, this time to meet with a client, “CC”, who is serving a sentence of life without parole for a murder he committed when he was sixteen. Today, CC is 29 and has spent most of his 13 years in prison locked in solitary confinement. More than anything else during our visit, I felt a sense of the overwhelming despair that inevitably consumes someone who has grown up inside the walls of a prison and has virtually no chance of ever getting out.

I myself walked out of our meeting frustrated, not only at the fact that there was little I could do to ease CC’s palpable anxiety. Our 3 hours of conversation certainly put him in a better mood than when he first walked in, if only because he had a chance to enjoy human interaction and a thought-provoking discussion. From a legal point of view however, CC knows that there is little recourse available to secure a reduction in his sentence or to get him before a parole board. (This was not a part of our conversation as I was only there to check in with CC, not to provide him legal counsel).

CC’s best shot at freedom right now is to hope for a Supreme Court decision concluding that a sentence of life without parole for crimes committed as a juvenile is unconstitutional. Several organizations have begun to advocate for this to happen, though it’s unlikely to come about anytime soon. In the meantime, I was left to ponder how an individual who has grown up in prison from a dangerous kid into an articulate, remorseful and educated adult can be left to stare ahead at the four walls around him without much hope of ever seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

The answer to me lies in the fact that our criminal justice system emphasizes uniformity and efficiency over individualized justice. Our justice system is not set up like a child welfare department, whereby case-workers monitor prisoners’ progress during incarceration to determine when they have assumed responsibility for their crimes, demonstrated remorse and matured to the point of being able to successfully re-enter society. Instead, our justice system attempts, though not always successfully, to ensure that similar crimes merit similar punishments, that criminal prosecution is executed pursuant to a protocol that protects the constitutional rights of the defendants, and that appellate courts are not bogged down by an endless series of appeals questioning the accuracy of the jury’s verdict.

This all sounds well and good, except when we consider that such a criminal justice system treats a 19-year old offender the same as a 40-year old offender, that taxpayers assume the cost of incarcerating individuals who no longer need to be locked up, and that prosecutors face incentives to maximize sentences instead of adopting a pragmatic approach that emphasizes ultimate re-entry into society. Moreover, especially when it comes to considering the death penalty, the criminal justice system tends to lose sight of the fact that human life is involved on both sides of the equation – on the victim’s side and on the perpetrator’s side. This point is made with startling clarity in the movie I saw last night, Dead Man Walking.

No doubt there are arguments in favor of our justice system as it exists today. Efficiency and uniformity keep the costs of prosecution and administration down and provide notice to potential criminals of the punishments they might face if they choose to act on their tendencies. Furthermore, our justice system mandates that when a crime is committed, all of society suffers harm and not just the immediate victim or the victim’s family. Meting out similar punishments for similar crimes is consistent with this philosophy.

Though I don’t expect our country’s justice system to be overhauled in the near future, I believe advocates of reform must figure out a way to focus their eyes on the light at the end of the tunnel – to lobby legislators and prosecutors and convince them that prisoners, especially young ones, who enjoy a ray of hope at being released might have incentives to clean up their act; to create better programs inside and outside of prison that encourage continuing education, regular communication with the outside world and positive reinforcement; and, above all, to emphasize that our criminal justice system must be more accountable to individual human beings, victims and criminal offenders alike.

Speaking Words of Wisdom

Passionate oratory voiced by church ministers and lay leaders catalyzed the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s. Instead of counting on physical comforts or material wealth to support its awe-inspiring endurance and drive to tear down racial barriers, the black community fed itself with the "soul food" of its leaders' daily rhetoric at mass Church meetings.

These are three of my favorite quotes from the Montgomery bus boycott, which was initiated when Rosa Parks boarded a bus, only a block from my current office, and refused to take a back seat as segregations laws required.*

And you know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.
There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair.
There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July, and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.
Martin Luther King, December 5th 1955 at a mass meeting signalling the start of the boycott.


We are not wrong in what we are doing.
If we are wrong, then the Supreme Court of this mighty nation is wrong.
If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong.
If we are wrong, God almighty is wrong.
Martin Luther King, December 5th 1955.

When MLK's own speech failed to resonate with the crowd at a later mass meeting in support of the boycott, Mother Pollard, one of the older members of the congregation walked up to the pulpit, comforted MLK and threw the crowd into a frenzy when she declared:
My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.
This simple sentence became one of the mantras of the Montgomery bus boycott.

*The boycott lasted for a full year, from December 5, 1955 until December 21, 1956. Led by Martin Luther King, Jr. at the age of only 26 (!!), the Montgomery Improvement Association worked on a shoestring and succeeded in keeping the boycott together. In addition to fleets of carpools and drivers organized by the MIA to help overcome the black community's near total dependence on public transportation, many people wound up trekking long distances by foot just to avoid taking the buses. The yearlong boycott represented an incredible feat of organization, unity and sheer willpower and propelled the southern Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. to the national consciousness. Though an area on the corner of the street where Rosa Parks boarded the bus is today called the Rosa Parks Plaza, no memorial or plaque exists at that location describing her momentous act.

The Cost of Death v. Life

A common refrain in the anti-death penalty world is that imposing capital punishment doesn’t make sense because it’s more costly to the State than imposing life without parole (LWOP). Several people have asked me where this statement comes from and I decided to do a bit of research to figure out what the scoop is.

The argument that a death sentence is more expensive than LWOP centers on the differences in cost between a capital trial versus one where the maximum sentence is LWOP. Though the cost of employing the prosecutors may be a fixed cost to the taxpayer no matter what kind of case is being tried (i.e. the prosecutors’ salary has to be paid either way), a death penalty trial is more expensive than other trials because it requires two phases, the first to determine the defendant’s guilt and the second to determine the defendant’s punishment, and because it involves significantly more pretrial preparation. Some state attorney generals also have prosecutor divisons devoted exclusively to capital trials.

According to the Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, Richard Dieter, in his January 2005 testimony before the New York State Assembly, a death penalty trial and the appeals that immediately follow it make a death sentence more costly than LWOP, even if a lifetime incarceration is more expensive than incarcerating an inmate until they’re executed. (note: many death sentences are not carried out because 68% of them are overturned on appeal, and 82% of those reversals result in a sentence of LWOP). Ultimately, Mr. Dieter’s point is that “a million dollars spent today is a lot more costly to the state than a million dollars that can be paid gradually over 40 years.” Mr. Dieter backed up his testimony by pointing to numerous studies calculating the costs of the death penalty versus LWOP in particular states, including a 1992 analysis presented in the Dallas Morning News that found that a death penalty trial costs an average of $2.3 million, or three times the average cost of imprisoning someone in a maximum security cell for 40 years.

Of course, there’s always another side to the story. According to a 1997 report by Dudley Sharp, the Death Penalty Resources Director for Justice for All (www.jfa.net) (Mr. Sharp’s paper is on www.prodeathpenalthy.com), LWOP is $1.2M - $3.6M more expensive than execution because the State must bear the cost of keeping the prisoner in state custody for the rest of their life. This figure is reached based on the dubious assumption that an LWOP prisoner is incarcerated 50 years verses only six years for a person on death row. Nevertheless, the overall point is that a life sentence is more expensive than a death sentence because it involves a longer period of incarceration.

Though my sympathies lie with the anti-death penalty stance, I don’t think that advocates on either side of the fence should put too much weight on a financial cost comparison as the primary motivation for abolishing or for continuing to impose the death penalty. That’s partly because the numbers can clearly be manipulated either way, but also because there are many other issues underlying the death penalty that I think are more important. For example, we must answer how and whether the death penalty furthers the pursuit of justice; whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent against crime and/or achieves moral retribution for the commission of particularly heinous acts (a la an “eye for an eye”); whether the state or a jury of peers has the power to decide that an individual has not only forfeited their right to live among society but also their right to live at all; whether we have made sufficient technological and forensic advancements to avoid putting an innocent person to death; and, finally, whether the widespread international criticism that this country has faced in imposing the death penalty should influence our system of punishment.

Letter from Birmingham

My Dear Barber Q,

In the spirit of Martin Luther King’s open Letter from Birmingham Jail, published in April 1963, I write to you having just returned from a weekend in the city made famous for its role in the 1960s civil rights movement. Unlike Dr. King’s letter, mine is drafted in the relative comfort of personal freedom and in a time when individuals, both black and white, are no longer risking their lives to end such egregious practices as segregation. Also unlike Dr. King's letter, mine is only intended to capture my reaction to a trip to your city that I took this past weekend in the company of Missy T and D-Man, whereas Dr. King’s powerful words dictated the philosophy behind non-violent direct action. Like Dr. King however, I write because I find myself in the south refusing to sit idly by while observing that injustice is still here.

Saturday afternoon, the three of us went to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, located right across the street from the 16th Street Baptist Church. (The church jumped into the national consciousness and became one of the most graphic images on display during the 1960s, when it was bombed by the Klu Klux Klan in September 1963 and killed 4 teenage girls inside). The CRI contains some of the most important symbols of the civil rights movement, including the door to Dr. King’s Birmingham jail cell and the front of a Trailways bus that was firebombed soon after it entered Alabama in 1961 while transporting Freedom Riders through the south.

While the museum was impressive, it served mainly to inform us of the imagery and historical context surrounding events that took place four decades ago. After leaving, we experienced first-hand how deep the roots of racial separation run in this city.

[Birmingham was founded 120 years ago in the wake of the civil war as an industrial mining town. Despite the fact that slavery had already ended, racial separation continued to permeate through the south, first by custom and then by law. The Birmingham mines were no different, with African Americans relegated to the dangerous and back-breaking menial work and whites appointed to supervisory positions. Socially, African Americans and whites also didn’t mix, especially in the wake of the white landowners’ resentment after the civil war. Because many white establishments refused to serve them, African Americans caught onto Birmingham’s fast paced development that earned the city its nickname the “magic city” by opening a slew of black businesses that served the African American community. Many of these businesses were located on Fourth Avenue, which is where we found ourselves soon after leaving the CRI. ]

Today, Fourth Avenue is still all black, featuring a row of African American barber shops, a theater famous for providing black entertainment, a well-known chicken wing joint and a funeral parlor. After walking out of a Montgomery barbershop last week with my first-ever mullet, I was in desperate need of another haircut, and I decided to take my hair and put it into your hands, Barber Q, when we entered the oldest black barbershop in Birmingham, Magic City Barbershop.

The music and conversation didn’t come screeching to a halt when we first walked in to your shop though we received some quizzical looks and side glances from the folks inside. No sooner had the three of us sat down before we started fielding questions asking what our names were, what we do, how old we are, etc…all trying to tactfully figure out how we managed to be the only three white customers on the entire block. By the time we left two hours later, however, we had broken through the color barrier and enjoyed friendly conversations, talking politics and bantering with everyone there. Though we couldn’t make it, we also appreciated your invitation to the shindig you were throwing in honor of your wife’s birthday. (The haircut was a drastic improvement also).

The next morning, the three of us found ourselves again to be the only persons not of color in attendance when we arrived for services at Birmingham’s historic Sixth Avenue Baptist Church. Having never attended a black Southern Baptist Church before, I’ve been looking forward to this experience since I arrived here. Now that I’ve had the chance to clap my hands and sing along with the spirited gospel music, say a few amens and shout out some hallelujahs, there’s no doubt in my mind that if I weren’t Jewish I’d be a southern Baptist. Surely Dr. King was aware of the similarities between Jews and African American Baptists, not only in their histories as a persecuted people, but also in their love of spirited singing and music in the prayer service.

Barber Q: I write today to say how much all three of us appreciated your openness and the openness of Birmingham’s African Americans to see beyond our skin color and to engage us in dialogue and welcome us into your community. Nevertheless, I leave Birmingham with a taste of extraordinary southern hospitality mixed with disappointment that though segregation is no longer practiced, separation still is. As I learned from spending time in your barbershop, attending church and even from dropping in at a black jazz joint on Saturday night, Birmingham still has miles to walk before reaching the plateau of race neutrality; before arriving at the day when the black leadership better represents its own constituency by demanding that the 73% of Birmingham residents who are African American practice their hard fought right to vote instead of letting it fall by the wayside; before the white leadership recognizes that equality can only be achieved with a judicial system that is not inherently biased against African Americans and that education only reinforces separation when both public and private schools are demographically lopsided.

Martin Luther King closed his Letter from Birmingham Jail by asking for “hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.” Those stars are certainly closer today than they were in Dr. King’s time, but we have yet to fully bask in their glow.

Yours,
Ariel Glasner

PS Grit Count = 3 Regular Grits, 2 Cheese Grits

Meat & 3

I just returned from a weekend at Virginia Beach with my family to celebrate July 4th, and more importantly my grandmother’s 80th birthday! I know that sometimes I take it for granted, but it’s truly a blessing to be able to vacation at the beach where we’ve been going for 25 years with both of my grandparents and, though they were not with me this past weekend, to still have all of my grandparents alive and in relatively good health.

Having just returned home from the weekend, I now have a few minutes to finish up the posting I started writing last week.

Alabama is known as one of the homes of authentic southern cooking – deep fried chicken, meat slathered with gravy, corn bread positively soaked with butter, collard greens, fried okra and candied yams - all to be washed down with sweet tea (that’s ice tea with about two cups of sugar per pitcher. I never knew what drinking liquid sugar tasted like until I had sweet tea).

Besides Sunday after church, one of the best times to get a taste of southern food is during the week, at one of the local lunch counters. (Note: lunch counters are located all over the deep south and aren’t indigenous to Alabama, however, each state’s lunch counters have a different character, and oftentimes different menu options). Though there are a few places to pick up tuna sandwiches or even to get take-out Chinese food for lunch in Montgomery (don’t come to Montgomery for its take-out Chinese food!), the most common place to pick up a bite to eat during the work week is lunch counters or low key restaurants known as Meat & 3 or Meat & 2s, meaning a meat dish and 2 or 3 side dishes.

Last week, when I had the pleasure of having Mommy Dearest pay me a visit, I decided I’d treat her to authentic southern cuisine – or at least authentic vegetarian southern cuisine – and take her to a local Meat & 3. I’ve never seen a restaurant like a Meat & 3. They’re usually only open from 12 – 3 on weekdays and each day they have a different menu that’s written out manually on a blank sheet of paper and then Xeroxed. The general choices are variations on fried chicken, beef with gravy or chicken with gravy. The side dishes include everything from steamed cabbage, to creamed corn, to mashed potatoes with gravy, to mac & cheese, to fried okra. Being a vegetarian for the summer it obviously sounds a bit ridiculous to go to lunch at a place where I can’t eat anything, but I love just soaking up the atmosphere, trying out the corn bread and ordering the “vegetarian platter”, which consists of 3-4 side dishes of my choosing.

The first place we went to – and the place I heard was one of the best in town – was the first floor of a person’s house, where the eponymous Martha converted her living room and dining room into a quaint lunch spot. After sitting down and starting to snack on the corn bread, Mom and I realized that everything, and I mean everything, on the menu was cooked with meat or a meat base, including all the vegetables. The waitress apologized, but she had nothing she could serve us. (“Made to order” dishes isn’t a familiar concept at a meat & 3). We were obviously disappointed, but I had a few fallbacks in mind so we made our way to another well known lunch spot.

Davis Café looks like its straight out of the 1960s – outside and inside. Despite its dim lighting and lack of décor, it always draws a crowd for lunch and is known for being a gathering spot for local politicos. In we went, and what do you know but 5 minutes later we were leaving again with the waitress’s apologies that she had nothing vegetarian to serve us following us out the door. After a few more stops we realized we had exhausted all the lunch counters we could find in downtown Montgomery and we weren’t going to have any luck finding a veggie option on the menu that day since everyone was pretty much serving the same thing. In the end, Mom and I had to settle for tuna sandwiches, a disappointing finale to our quest for authentic southern cooking.

Though he might not find a whole lot of cheeseburgers here, Jimmy Buffet would probably be in paradise down south thanks to his “carnivorous habits” (See: Cheeseburger in Paradise). For Mom and me, however, we learned the obvious lesson that it’s not easy being a vegetarian in Montgomery. I always marvel at the luxuries we have in the Northeast, where it’s virtually a given that every restaurant has at least one solid veggie option in order to succeed. It’s easy for me to imagine that if more southerners came up north for a spell then America would be less of a meat eating culture, which could have a positive impact on transforming our “Fast Food Nation” into a country of more health conscious eaters. On the other hand, I think northerners have a lot to learn from the southern concept of food – which is more similar to the European take on things – that we were put here on this good earth to satisfy our appetites, and we might as well have a passion for what winds up getting digested in our stomachs, even if it could potentially raise our cholesterol levels a few notches.

Last but not least, since this posting is all about food, I’m sorry to say that my grit count has been completely static the last week (I'm not counting the grits I tasted at Virginia Beach, which don’t hold a candle next to the real thing down here.)

Next time I’m going out to lunch on Wednesday, when I’m guaranteed of getting some (vegetarian) macaroni and cheese!!