[Cdhrsupport] Transforming Grief into Hope

[SF-8 case]

TRANSFORMING GRIEF INTO HOPE
By Grace Lee Boggs
Michigan Citizen, Mar. 25-31, 2007

I have received some very positive  responses to my recent column 
calling for Amnesty for Black Panthers.  Readers are, of course, 
outraged by the arrest in San Francisco of eight 50-70 year old men 
for the alleged killing of a police officer  nearly three decades 
ago. The original charges were dismissed after a judge concluded that 
the confessions the prosecutors relied on were extracted through torture,

The proposal has also provided an opportunity to  revisit the 
movements of the 60s.

Most people only remember the Black Panthers as very macho, 
gun-carrying militants,  dressed in black leather jackets and black 
berets,  inviting confrontations with the "pigs."  But the comment of 
a woman reader in Detroit reminds us that there was a "Serve the 
People" side to the Panthers which could be the key to transforming 
our schools and rebuilding our communities today.   As a teenager she 
took the bus every Saturday to work with their Breakfast for Children 
program.  "I thought they would save us."

A California reader wants to know "whether  this same plea would be 
made for the old crackers occasionally being found, apprehended, and 
tried for murders of blacks in the '60s? "

In the 1960s not many people would have replied "Yes"  to this query. 
But since then, the whole world has watched   Nelson Mandela and 
Bishop Tutu  pursue a policy of reconciliation rather than 
retribution in order to create a new multiracial democratic  South 
Africa.  In this spirit  the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions 
(TRC)  invited not only the victims of state violence but the 
perpetrators of violence for the apartheid state to testify and 
request amnesty from prosecution.

The TRC  replaced a system of  Retributive or Punitive  Justice with 
programs of Restorative Justice.

Just imagine how much more intact our families and communities would 
be today if
over the last forty years since the urban rebellions, we had done 
something similar.

Just imagine how many lives would have been saved and how much less 
violent  our neighborhoods and cities  would be if we had created 
programs   providing ways  for offfenders  to regain their place in 
the community through  individual and community self-criticism and 
transformation.

Just imagine how city, state and federal finances would have 
benefited from restoring individuals committing illegal acts  to the 
community instead of incarcerating them at a cost of $30,000 each.

Instead, our Punitive Justice system has

*transformed countless young offenders whose original offenses were
relatively minor into hardened criminals.

*produced prisons  filled with disproportionately black "urban 
felons" and white guards which  make huge profits for private 
corporations and are a critical source of "economic development" in 
disproportionately white  and impoverished rural  America.

Meanwhile violent crime is showing a sharp rise in many cities.

For example, in Detroit during the last week in February,   Orlando 
Herron, 13, and Darren Johnson, 11, were shot execution-style at a 
west side home.   Yale Miller, 35, a community leader and father of 
four., was killed when unknown persons fired shots  at the 1999 Jeep 
he was driving.  A 72 year old gay  man, Andrew Anthos, 72, 
died  from an attack outside his downtown Detroit apartment building,

Yet most talk show callers only complain that  the governor is 
"letting prisoners out of jail to  "save money."

How would we go about rethinking and replacing our present system of 
Punitive Justice?

This is the conversation we now need in what MLK called "our dying cities."

To get this conversation going,  a broad coalition of community 
organizations is sponsoring  a "Tranforming Grief into Hope" 
gathering on Saturday, April 21 from 3:30-6 p.m, at the Williams 
Community Center on Rosa Parks Blvd. in the heart of the neighborhood 
that was at the epicenter of the  1967 rebellion.   The event will 
include food, fellowship, speak-out, singing, poetry, art, a memorial 
service.

See <http://www.detroit-city-of-hope.org/>www.detroit-city-of-hope.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/cdhrsupport_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20070326/5337f013/attachment.html