Kiddos, aching souls, and the school-to-prison pipeline

Photo by Mike Mozart

I don’t make the connection until eight weeks into the summer.

“I really love what I’m doing with Reunion and Church of Christ, Right Now,” I keep telling friends, family, anyone on the street who will listen to me gush about my new love.

I feel moved when I go to jail. I feel deep meaning in the conversations and relationships and support groups with the ones coming home from jail, the ones long ago in jail and now leaders in the movement, the ones who’ve never been to jail and desperately don’t want their grandkids to go there. Jesus is in jail. The Spirit is in the vulnerability and open heartedness. The leaders of this movement are prophets and saints and I want to sit at their feet and soak up all their wisdom and commitment and love.

“On the other hand,” I shrug, “the after-school program stuff is fine—I just plan field trips and help out with a summer camp for kids. But I’ve been there before. I’ve taught reading before; I’ve worked in a summer daycare; I’ve written curriculum. I’m ready for something new. I’m ready to put my theology to use.”

Taking kindergarteners to the American Indian museum to build an igloo, after all, is not really theology. Right?

*

It is time to go on a trip with the middle school kids.

I squish into the van with them as we drive the twenty minutes to get downtown.

The three boys sitting on the seat next to me are bragging about how bad they are. “I’ve been expelled from three schools,” one says. “I’ve been expelled from one, but I have a feeling I’ll get kicked out of my new one,” another responds, trying to keep up. “My cousin got suspended,” says the goody-goody, bless his heart.

I want to roll my eyes. I am sure these kids are exaggerating. I keep listening.

“My dad has been in jail most of my life,” is where the conversation migrates. “Almost all my relatives have been in jail,” says another kid. “My brother had to go to juvy for stealing an iPhone from the store,” says another. “My teacher keeps telling me I’m gonna end up in juvy,” says the kid with the dad in jail. “You only get three strikes before you get locked up for good,” someone warns. “My cousin has four strikes though,” one protests.

And like that, the synapses meet, and my heart is weeping and praying for each of them by name.

These kids I work with in the mornings will become the incarcerated folks I work with in the afternoons.

It was only last night that our support group had a heart-wrenching conversation about belonging and love. So many aching souls in that room, confessing that they'd longed for more love from their mothers and fathers. They'd run away from home because of it. They'd ended up in juvy because of it. They'd sought love in all the wrong places, formed all the wrong kinds of relationships. Only to find now, at 28 or 37 or 59, that they are tired of the search. They are tired and they want to rest here in this community, in this place, where if they are brave enough to be themselves, there is love to be found.

And now, when these twelve- and thirteen-year-olds give their macho stories about their dads absent in jail, I know I am hearing the same story in a different tone of voice. In just a few short years, these boys are so likely to become the men in jail, wanting another way but not knowing how to repair relationships, how to break out of poverty without a little quick money on the side to get them started. They are so likely to become those tired men sitting around the table at support group. Because if it’s all they’ve ever seen from every man in their family, who can tell them there’s another way? I grew up without ever questioning if I’d go to college. Everyone in my family went to college. It was a given. What is the given for these kids?

For some of them—the troublemakers, the ones with a rebellious streak—the connection is not hard to visualize. But the little guy in the front row with the sideways baseball cap? The beautiful girl with a scowl who brightens as she comes up with the most thoughtful answer to every question? Surely not them, too?

And then my heart skips a beat, as I think of the sweet little kindergarteners I took to the museum yesterday. The tiny little girls and boys who hold hands and walk through the exhibits with their matching visors and garner the admiration of every stranger. The adorable little voices who chorus, “Thank you, Miss Katie,” and giggle so freely. The open hearts who stare in wide-eyed wonder at the whale hanging from the ceiling and exclaim, “Whoa!” every time I open the box to show them a new type of rock.

It is one thing for the moody, exasperating middle-schoolers to grow up to be incarcerated. But who will these kindergarterners grow up to be?

Lord, have mercy. May it not be so.

*

For the last two weeks, I want to soak up all the love and open-heartedness I can from the re-entry program, from the beautiful spirits of the men and women coming home from prison.

And then I want to take and fling it with all my strength into the hearts of the kids in the summer program, whether by presence or by conversation or, simply and desperately, by prayer.

Because my work is not divided this summer into two unrelated ministries. It is one. The love we share in the support group is the same love needed by the kids. If they can receive love now, perhaps they won’t smoke and drink to escape it all. If they can be wrapped in the grace and protection of the spirit now, perhaps they will find a different way than their fathers.

And for me--if this daily breaking of my heart can be captured and bathed in the Spirit, perhaps something beautiful becomes of me, too.

When we need everyone at the table

Imagine you are part of a movement to dismantle mass incarceration, in part through changing the prison-industrial system by which profits are made when more people are in jail. Imagine that representatives of this very prison-industrial system seek to join your cause. Will you let them stay?

Imagine you are part a community which wants to build supportive relationships across divisions of race and class. You want everybody to have a place in your community, a place to share their experiences and feelings. Imagine someone comes into your space spouting divisions of race and class. Will you let them stay?

*

About 10 folks in my organization, as a creative protest measure, bought one share each in the largest for-profit prison company in the US. Being shareholders, they attend the shareholder meeting every year to advocate for better ways, different profit incentives, various reforms. There may not be any visible results yet, but they are witnessing to a different way.

Meanwhile, some of the board members of the prison company have taken an interest in the efforts of my organization, the way they seek to support folks coming home from prison. They have taken an interest in our support groups, and our house for guys who've been recently incarcerated, and the jobs and education programs to which we are connected. They have given donations. They have come to visit. One may speak at our fundraiser.

The director of our organization acknowledged the dissonance. "Yes, it's goofy," she said. "It's an uncomfortable reality. When they first started giving us money, we weren't sure what to do. But then we thought if we didn't want to accept dirty money, whose money could we accept?

"Besides," she added, "we believe we need everyone at the table."

Yes. We can only break down systems of injustice if everyone is on board. Everyone. And that means that we have to be willing to engage with folks who disagree with us, who threaten our cause, with whom our relationship is complicated or goofy.

Because it's relationships and transformed hearts that we're after--not just new laws that leave old walls and divisions in place.

*

Photo by Jim Champion

In my internship, we have meetings called "Freedom Circles," which are dangerous things. Like an AA meeting or a summer camp sharing circle, the meetings start off with this week's leader reading or reflecting on a particular topic, and then there are 45 minutes before us in which anyone may speak. Which is the beauty, and the danger.

Because everyone is welcome at the table, and everyone has a voice.

Last week "everyone" included someone who was frustrated, someone who was angry, someone who was lonely, someone who felt wronged by the group. There we were, all of us broken together in the room, and the time was open before us, free for the seizing.

Several people shared, some speaking with candor and honesty, some with anger and walls, some with repetitive phrases that made me wonder whether this meeting had a point. There are days where the sharing is deep and succinct and profound, where someone gives us a window into her past, where someone acknowledges the pain he has caused others, where someone makes a new connection about her feelings of abandonment that have led to addiction, where someone admits he doesn't know how to fix his relationship.

This was not that day. A few folks shared. They mostly talked too long. They mostly exuded frustration and anger. After each person, we chorused "Thanks for sharing," even though saying it felt a bit disingenuous. After one angry outburst, I noticed sidelong glances and folks uncomfortably shifting in their seats.

The leader took it all in stride. Later, he would tell me, "that meeting went exactly how it was supposed to go." He proceeded with the meeting, explaining that we were all about to share the ritual of communion. He broke half of a hamburger bun and held up a punch cup half full of grape juice, then began passing them around the room, even as some of the other members of the circle continued looking around, unsettled, uncertain. I noticed a certain tension in my chest.

After a hesitating start, a woman offered the cup to her neighbor, saying, "This cup was given so that you may know that even though you are broken, you are not beyond God's love." Just as the reality of those words began to flood into all of us, the leader had begun singing. "Bind us together, Lord, bind us together with cords that cannot be broken...bind us together in love." A few of us joined in, and as we sang and shared and ate, something happened.

My breathing slowed and I turned just in time to see a man who had earlier been shaking his head at his neighbor in disgust and frustration, offering to him the bread and the cup. This was, for both of them, their first time sharing communion in our group. "The body of Christ and the blood of Christ, given for you," the man said as his neighbor took a piece. The neighbor then turned to me. I knew he was angry at me for an earlier miscommunication. But he pushed the cup to me and said simply, "The body and blood of Christ."

"Amen."

I thought how neither of us deserved this moment. None of us deserved to be at this table.

The leader closed in prayer, and people began filing out. I stood to talk to my neighbor, apologizing for hurting him. He accepted my apology. By this time the rest of the folks had left, and I wondered if some of them had been put off by the halting meeting.

I hope not.

Because to dismantle mass incarceration, we need everyone at the table. To build true community, we need to welcome everyone to the table, broken people included. And as Jesus reminded me that night, communion is holy because it reminds us that we are all sitting at a table only by mercy--you, and me, and the one with the angry outburst, and the one with only frustration in her heart, and whoever else walks in the door tomorrow.