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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (July 18, 2012)
• Page 6 w ^ortlanb (Dbseruer July 18, 2012 Working Toward Justice for Children A victory to spur us on and give us hope by M arian W right E delman On June 25th, the U.S. Su preme Court in Miller v. Ala bama banned mandatory sen tences of life in prison without parole for juveniles. This is a major victory for children and for America and a giant step forward for justice for children. Until this decision, America was the only country in the world to routinely condemn children as young as 13 and 14 to die in prison. Now about two thousand people who were sentenced to die in prison as juve niles have hope for a new hearing and a new sentence. While we are disappointed the court did not ban the practice outright, we must keep working toward justice for chil dren and end the devastating cradle to prison pipeline crisis that leads to marginalized lives, imprisonment, and premature death. Bryan Stevenson, the brilliant founder and executive director of Equal Justice Initia tive in Montgomery, Ala., argued this case and the companion case Jackson v. Hobbs before the Supreme Court. Earlier in June he told participants at the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools National Training session how he first became devoted to helping children in our adult justice system: “I was working on a case when a grand mother called me, and this young boy had been arrested. This boy was living in a house where his mother had repeatedly been the victim of a lot of sexual assault, a lot of physical assault and domestic violence. And one day this boy's stepfather came home, and he just punched this boy's mother in the face. She fell on the floor unconscious, and the little boy tried to revive his mom and he couldn't do it, and she was bleeding. And we think he thought his mom was dead.” Bryan Stevenson continued with his harrowing true crime story: “And the man went into the bedroom and fell asleep, and after he did that, this little boy got up. He was about five feet tall, 14 years of age, under 100 pounds, and he waited until the man went into the bedrobm and fell asleep . . . and he went over to the “The grandmother called me three days later, and I went to the jail to see this little boy. I started asking him questions, and no matter what I asked him, this little boy just sat there. I tried to ask him some more questions; he just sat there. He wasn't responding to any thing I said, and finally after 20 minutes, I said, ‘Look, you got to talk to me. I can't help you if you don't talk to me.’ “I got up and 1 walked around the table, and I got my chair close to him . . . I started leaning on him a little bit and leaning on him, and finally, he leaned back. And when he leaned back into me, I put my arm around him and said, ‘Come on, tell me what's going on.’ Now, this child had no prior criminal history. He had never been in trouble before. He was actually a good student, no juvenile adjudications, and probably would have been tried as a juvenile but for the fact that this man was a deputy sheriff. -B iyan Stevenson man's dresser, and he pulled out this man's handgun. And while the man was sleeping, this little boy walked over to him, and he pointed the gun at his head, and tragically at point-blank range, he pulled the trigger. The man was killed instantly. “Now, this child had no prior criminal history. He had never been in trouble before. He was actually a good student, no juvenile adjudications, and probably would have been tried as a juvenile but for the fact that this man was a deputy sheriff. And because he was a deputy sheriff, the prosecutor insisted that this child be tried as an adult, and the judge certified him to stand trial as an adult and put him in the adult jail. This boy started crying, and through his tears, he began talking to me not about what happened at his house with his mom or his stepdad, but he began talking to me about what had happened at the jail. He told me on the first night, he had been assaulted by several men. Then he told me on the next night, he had been sexually assaulted by several men, and then he told me on the night before I had gotten there, there were so many people who had assaulted him, he actually couldn't remember how many there had been. “I held this little boy while he cried hysteri cally for over an hour, and I left that jail thinking this is our system— our system— and so it became necessary for me to say something.” So now, Bryan Stevenson said, “I repre sent these young people who have many times been horribly abused. We put them in adult prisons. There are 27 states that put children in adult facilities where they are 10 times more likely to be the victims of sexual assault, 25 times more likely to commit sui cide, and there is this silence.” Once he saw the truth, he knew he could never be among those who stay silent. He also said: “Of all the problems that I'm talking about [with the treatment of juveniles in the adult justice system]— and I’m talking about race and I'm talking about poverty and I’m talking about abuse of power and I'm talking about miscon duct— the problem that we have got to con front is hopelessness, the profound absence of hope that is represented by the death penalty, by life imprisonment without parole for children, by mass incarceration, by the way in which we are dealing with people. . . I'll tell you something about hope. Where there is hopelessness, there is always injus tice, and you can never achieve justice with out hopefulness.” The Supreme Court’s historic decision to abolish mandatory life in prison without pa role sentences for children reinforces the importance of never giving up hope as we all keep speaking out and fighting for justice for children. We still have so much work left to do to solve the crisis of children in adult prisons—but we now have a huge victory to spur us on and give us more hope. Bryan Stevenson helped changed the nation’s course by saying something and doing some thing, and so must we. Marian Wright Edelman is president o f the Children's Defense Fund. Save Austerity Measures for the Next Boom Government and family spending aren’t the same by D onald K aul There are two compet ing theories on how to pull us out of the eco nomic slump we're in, but you'd hardly know it from the debate going on in Washington. Conserva tives, who want us to cut our way to prosper ity, keep drowning out those who think we should be pumping money into the economy by spending more on teachers, research, roads, bridges, and other public works. The small-government, budget-cutting "austerity" advocates speak in strident, con fident voices, while the proponents of more government spending — the people called "Keynesians" (after the 20th-century British economist, John Maynard Keynes) — speak in apologetic, barely audible tones, as though they're afraid of offending someone. economist who speaks in a loud, clear voice President Barack Obama is the latter. He that irritates the heck out of conservatives. sounds defensive when he puts forward one That is to say, he speaks sense. of his anemic "stimulus" plans and is always But not "common sense." Common sense careful to balance expenditures with money is on the budget-cutters' side. When your from a tax increase for the rich. family has run up a lot of debt, cutting back He's even gone so far as to bring out the on spending seems self-evidently the right stale comparison equating a government in thing to do. Why are governments different? debt with families that live beyond their Krugman answers that as well and suc means. There's only one solution for in cinctly as anyone I've read. debted households and nations, conserva "An economy is not like an indebted fam tives say — belt-tightening. ily," he wrote a few weeks ago. "Our debt is And that's pretty much what Obama said mostly money we owe to each other; even last year: We’ve run up too much debt, and more important, our income mostly comes now we have to start tightening our belts. It from selling things to each other. Your spend was a shot into every Keynesian's heart. ing is my income, and my spending is your "No, no," I wanted to shout. "That's their income. So what happens if everyone simul argument, not yours." Fortunately, I didn't taneously slashes spending in an attempt to shout it. (When you start yelling at the tele pay down debt? The answer is everyone's vision set, you're only one step away from income falls ... and, as our incomes plunge, wearing a tag with your name and address on our debt problem gets worse, not better." it, so when you go out, you can find your way "When the private sector is frantically back home.) trying to pay down debt," he adds, "the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman public sector should do the opposite, spend is a Keynesian, but not of the shrinking- ing when the private sector can't or won't. By violet variety. He's a Nobel-Prize-winning all means let's balance our budget once th e , economy has recovered— but not now. The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity." Sounds good to me, but they were still teaching Keynes when I was in school. In Europe today, apparently not so much. But there's some indication that the hardliners are backing off from their most draconian prescriptions. Not all conservatives are stupid, you know. The intelligent ones fear that more deficit spending in the face of a huge national debt will trigger inflation that, in the long run, will mean ruination. It's better to let the econom y crash and rebuild it from the ground up, they say. Personally, I prefer to delay whatever long-term m edicine we might need, be cause it's entirely possible that we're able to make things better now without govern ment austerity. As Keynes, a witty man, once said o f econom ists who counseled the long view: "In the long run, we are all dead." OtherWords columnist Donald Kaul lives . in Ann Arbor, Mich.
