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ACEs Science Champions Series: Bryan Stevenson: To Heal National Trauma, We Need to Face Our Genocidal Past

 

Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, won a U.S. Supreme Court case banning mandatory life sentencing without parole for anyone age 17 or younger. Based in Birmingham, Alabama, a state that officially celebrates Robert E. Lee and Martin Luther King, Jr., day together, the Harvard-trained lawyer has dedicated his life to serving the poor, the incarcerated, and children prosecuted as adults.

Stevenson keynoted the final day of the 2016 Conference on Adverse Childhood Experiences held October 19-21 in San Francisco and hosted by the Center for Youth Wellness (CYW). CYW is based in Bayview/Hunter’s Point, a part of San Francisco as far removed from the thriving high-tech scene as is Birmingham.

The founder of the Center for Youth Wellness, Dr. Nadine Burke-Harris, a dynamic pediatrician and social activist, introduced Stevenson, whom she met at a dinner hosted by Alphabet (formerly known as Google) chairman, Eric Schmidt. Fortuitously seated together, they both recognized in each other a drive to create more justice in this country.

“America is the most punitive nation in the world,” Stevenson began, and then cited some well known statistics: the U.S. incarcerates 2.3 million people today, up from 300,000 in 1972. Stevenson said blacks suffer most, because one out of three male African American babies are now expected to go to prison.

Bryan

He said that part of the problem is our culture. “We use a punishment mindset that exacerbates the trauma (people have already suffered). We have to change that.”

He offered several solutions, some cultural, some policy-driven, such as having the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declare a health crisis in the 200 zip codes in the U.S. where 80 percent of the children are expected to end up in jail because of the dire circumstances they will experience,  including family violence, neighborhood violence and systems violence. 

To me, the child of a holocaust survivor, whose own parents and grandparents were survivors of anti-Semitic pogroms in Eastern Europe, Stevenson’s depiction of America as a “post-genocidal society,” created by “an ideology of white supremacy” rang true.

In school, we are taught that this country is shaped by the desire for equality, yet as Stevenson points out, “The demography of this nation was shaped by racial terror.

“Slavery didn’t end in 1865. It just evolved,” he added.

"My parents,” he said, “were humiliated every day of their lives. We haven’t dealt with that.”

He cited examples of countries that have faced up to their genocidal history, including South Africa with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission after apartheid, and Germany, where in Berlin plaques are mounted on buildings denoting former homes and businesses of Jews who were killed or forced to leave.

In his own attempt to reconcile with our past and promote healing, his institute is putting up markers at every lynching site in the U.S. Stevenson has also written a best-selling book about his work and life, Just Mercy.

Addressing the audience of 450 clinicians, educators, social workers, therapists and community advocates dedicated to helping develop resilience in children and adults suffering adverse childhood experiences, he said, “I realized why I do what I do. Because I’m broken, too. It is being broken that can lead us to healing.”

As for what impels him to keep serving the poor, “The opposite of poverty is not wealth. It’s justice.”

 

 

 

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Thank you Sylvia for sharing your eloquent and imperative blog on Bryan's powerful keynote. His inspirational and insightful lens on the glaring reality of our nation was profound. With the hundreds of attendees rousing standing ovation, his words rang true and ignited our collective passion.

May our federal, state and local systems (education, justice, faith-based...) begin to speak and teach the truth of our nation's history built from the genocide of our indigenous tribes and enslavement of Africans as we begin our painstaking healing together authentically.

Let's learn from other countries in the process of healing their historical wounds. The time is now... and we are who we are waiting for.

Perhaps we might consider Canada, in a positive light. At our own [U.S.] National Center for PTSD Library, I read portions of the Canadian Solicitor General's Report on the Aboriginal Schools, noting the four Protestant denominations who accepted responsibility for the assorted atrocities, and the lengthy negotiations of their Reconciliation process-which is still on-going.

George Bernard Shaw is credited with the quote: "To Punish a Man, You Must Injure Him; To Reform a man, you must Improve him; and men are not improved by Injuries."

Perhaps Shaw recognized how "punitive" we were as a nation, not only to Men, but Women, and too frequently, Children.

In recognizing our own national [punitive] culture, and other influences, might we also consider:

1) The role of  Gayaneshagowa (The Constitution of the Five [Iroquois] Nations)--which gave Women the Rights to [Assert], Debate, Vote, and Declare War, almost 1,000 years before we amended our [U.S.] constitution to avail them the vote;

2) The use of "Peonage" [which PBS produced a film by that title] in lieu of Slavery- which also disenfranchised Blacks from voting rights, and a "moral economy" of livable wages. (I note that the only felons New Hampshire presently excludes from voting rights are those convicted of Treason, Bribery, and [felony] violation of Election Laws. All other N.H. 'felons' can still vote.) Perhaps other states might consider this. (Not that our [NH] prior history of only allowing White Male Property Owners to vote, isn't relevant, too.)

3) The 'purge' on Midwives [in Europe] as well as on "Witches" [here in America], and the Role of the Flexner Report on Medical Education in America (adopting the [German] Male only Medical Education model). In 1900, just before the Flexner Report was issued, 95% of the babies delivered in America were delivered by midwives, if I'm not mistaken. ("Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers" by Barbara Ehrenreich). (A recent ACEsConnection post noted Alice Miller's book ["For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child Rearing..."] noting 'Parenting Manuals' that were in vogue when Hitler and his Nazi collaborators were children, belied extreme hostility to children... ).

4) I'm sure there are a host of other 'oppressive' traumatic legacies [historical trauma] we might do well to identify. Certainly the current Prison 'Strikes' or Prison 'Work Slowdowns' beginning on the 45th anniversary of the Attica Rebellion, absent much media coverage..., I believe Heather Ann Thompson's 2016 book "Blood In the Water: ..." adequately chronicled the Attica 'uprising', although the role of the American Correctional Chaplains Association in proposing 'Maxi-Maxi' Prisons for 'hard-core militant prisoners', before the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities, wasn't specifically noted in the book.

P.S. Lest I forget, the people of Standing Rock, North Dakota, currently asserting their concern of sacred burial grounds being disrupted by a pipeline intended to carry tar-sands oil in proximity to their water supply; this, in spite of a recent Executive Order by President Obama 'pausing' the pipeline construction.

Last edited by Robert Olcott
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