Strange But True Story #3

Back in college, I interned at the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. Located on Maryland Avenue, directly across the street from both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Capitol in an old, labyrinthine urban mansion, it seemed the ideal place to begin my legal career, years before I became a lawyer.

I was there during both the tumult of the Supremes' flag burning decision in Texas v. Johnson, and the parallel battle in Congress over a Constitutional Amendment to ban flag desecration. One day, the executive director of the office, Morton Halperin, asked me to participate in a debate on the issue for a group of high school kids; I would represent the A.C.L.U., and my opponent, a representative from The Heritage Foundation, would represent the contrary view. I was thrilled, especially because the debate would take place in a conference room somewhere in the bowels of the Capitol Building. Honest to God, I'm going to debate free speech on Capitol Hill.

Debate day came. I was no stranger to public speaking, and it was a gig of sophomores, but I was nervous, struck by the subjective gravitas of the moment: shaping young minds on a matter of profound cultural importance. I arrived to find a hundred or so kids, a moderator, and my debate opponent, twenty years my senior. As I greeted him and introduced myself, he made an odd comment I didn't comprehend about "the toilet."

I spoke first, and gave a reasoned presentation on the folly of restricting offensive speech within the very words of our Constitution. I gave slippery slope examples, and talked about past dark battles over free speech. My comments were well received, I thought, but I remembered that I offered only one side of the issue.

My opponent, spoke nothing about the Constitution, offered no stirring defense of the flag. Instead, he accused the A.C.L.U. of coddling the worst of society: abortionists, pornographers, murderers. His entire presentation was an indictment of the organization I came to represent. I was confused and embarrassed. I had been eager for a spirited, eye-opening debate, and instead, got personally attacked.

The moderator seemed to sense that the spirit of debate had been sabotaged. She opened the floor to questions. Many hands went up. The first question came: "We learned in our debate class about ad hominem attacks. You didn't talk at all about why banning flag burning is a good thing, you just personally attacked the other guy..."

The guy from The Heritage Foundation offered no response to the point, reiterating the wickedness of the A.C.L.U.

The next question, to him, pointed out that he hadn't responded to the first kid's point. When he refused to answer, I took the floor:

I grew up in a house that took the rights of individuals very seriously. I came to the A.C.L.U. to learn more about civil liberties and how our government takes liberties with our liberties, sometimes in the name of special interests. I know very little about The Heritage Foundation, but I am now convinced that I need to learn more about it, and so should you, because my debate opponent has shown his stripes. When he began to attack the organization I represent, I felt embarrassed. Now, I'm embarrassed only for this man, who seems intent on denying you what you came here for.

The Heritage Foundation guy packed up his stuff and left without a word, and left me to my audience. The kids were great; enthusiastic about the same issues that had brought me to D.C. in the first place. I spoke about the city, and my experiences in it, but reminded them that I had had my two most memorable epiphanies about politics and government on that very day: first, when my debate opponent went rogue, and second, when the kids called him on it. It was cynicism supplanted by faith. God bless the future of America, I thought.

And, now, free speech unencumbered, I finally exclaim: "HEY, HERITAGE FOUNDATION GUY, GO FUCK YOURSELF."

On the Sowell Matter

This is no sermon. There is no point in waxing poetic on the horror of it all: a mass murder amid the poverty class in the Poverty Capital of America, the loss and suffering of the living and the dead.

This is, instead, a public policy position statement shrouded in the loose observations of an author who is lamentably familiar with the poverty class. Consider this: the current and justifiable hue and cry can be Venn diagrammed by two overlapping circles.

First is the circle of Anthony Sowell, who ghoulishly lived among the victims for God knows how long undetected, despite his violent record, the recurrence of red-flag brushes with the law, and his loosely monitored status as a sex offender registrant.

Second is the circle of the dead: disposable, untraceable women in a community disinterested in their fates in life. Many had loose ties to their families, or none at all. Some had drug/alcohol problems or criminal records/arrest warrants, themselves, which left them outside of the social realm designed to look out for them, whether living, missing or dead.

These circles overlap, not in the Sowell residence, itself, but in the criminal justice system. Let me explain: justice is the intersection of many things, but the best (and I argue the only) way to evaluate it is to look at how our institutions treat the least among us in society. If the least among us are treated with dignity and fairness and reasonableness, in compliance with Constitutional standards, then our society is a healthy one. If our society ignores its obligations to look out for the least among us, then our society is a failure; it is unjust. This is the milieu of the criminal justice system.

The criminal justice system is a vast Venn diagram of its own. It purports to be the hand of society that serves justice, and it employs many constituent parts. Police, prosecutors, judges, jailers, defense lawyers are some of the parties paid to supply justice. It's subjective consumers are defendants and victims, its objective consumers are jurors and, theoretically, the public at large, the community served by the system.

It is the last of these categories that, now, sees the folly of a current system that "let Sowell happen," so to speak. But as the finger-pointing heats up (an aside: prosecutors blaming police, police blaming prosecutors? What a refreshing change from everyone blaming defense attorneys...), I suggest that the public at large "let Sowell happen." I don't mean his neighbors. I mean a society whose only engagements with the criminal justice system are the shamefully two-dimensional caricatures paraded past us by the media, with content spoon fed to it by people with much to gain by the maintenance of a corrupt status quo. I mean a society that knows nothing about the mechanism of the law, and cares nothing about the circumstances that lead subjective consumers of criminal justice to it's courthouses and cages.

It is just as likely that I would be assigned to represent Sowell in court for his crimes as it is that I was assigned to represented any number of his victims during their own legal headaches. That's because I look out for the least among us, the poor, the forgotten, the mentally ill, the addicted, even the despicable. I give them their Constitutional due. I give them some judgement-free dignity. You watch it and you smell it from the inside as I do, and perhaps you'll make sense of what I've said about the system and what I do for a living.

Welcome to the Bloomsday Device.