FOREWORD
This right here. This book.
What Zach Norris has done in his thoughtful and ambitious book is expand the story of justice further. He reaches back in time to the founding of our nation—how did we get here?—and he reaches forward, envisioning a compassionate future that promises much greater safety, particularly for all those who are most vulnerable in today’s world.
The opposite of criminalization is humanization, treating each other like human beings, reclaiming the empathy and grace that seem to have fallen out of fashion.
Zach’s own humanity has always been striking. He was just an intern when he came on board at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (an organization I cofounded in 1996): an intense young man who arrived at the office before everyone else each morning and stayed late most every night. I was reminded of a passage in Letters from Prison by the theologian and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back?
I came to find out that the real magic happened every time Zach would interact with the families of kids who were locked up. Zach’s superpower is making people feel heard. Folks instinctively know they can trust him and rely on him. Around the Ella Baker Center, we all knew Zach was the secret to the success of our Books Not Bars campaign, which helped to shut down multiple youth prisons and kept a “youth super jail” from being built.
When Zach took on the executive directorship of the Ella Baker Center in 2013, it was clear that the country had reached an inflection point where liberals and conservatives were agreeing that prisons were a waste: a waste of money and a waste of lives. Zach had a vision for the opposite of the endless cycles of dehumanization, deprivation, and damage. He envisioned the hope and love of the Oakland community embodied in a building called Restore Oakland. He wanted to build a kind of monument to redemption.
As this book goes to press, his vision has been realized: Restore Oakland (a collaboration of multiple organizations) has opened its doors, offering conflict resolution through restorative justice, housing and tenant rights advocacy, and a hub to organize immigrants, formerly incarcerated people, students, LGBTQ people, and other community members. Making that vision a reality was no small feat, more proof of the powerhouse we have in Zach Norris. You’d be wise to take the model of safety presented in this book seriously as well. These are common-sense ideas whose time should have come long ago.
For twenty-five years I’ve been on the front lines of criminal justice reform. As an advocate, I’ve been in and out of more prisons than I care to count. I’ve attended too many funerals where the young people are in the caskets and the old folks are mourning in the pews.
I’ve seen firsthand the devastating impact that excessive incarceration has had on generations of families and entire communities—communities that were criminalized, that came to be regarded as dangerous and suspect. And I’ve seen the suffering of the survivors and the families who have been hurt, who rarely if ever have found healing—even when those who hurt them spend their life behind bars.
America’s criminal justice system is based on retribution, the primitive notion of an eye for an eye that Gandhi says leaves the whole world blind. The damage done by an incident of violent crime is often horrific enough. But then society adds more damage with a system hell-bent on revenge. How is damage plus damage supposed to add up to justice and healing? That’s an equation that’s never going to work.
It is sometimes justified or necessary to place a human being behind bars. But incarceration is hardly the panacea—for the wrong-doer, for the victim, or even for society—that the public is led to believe it is. In fact we are far more likely to get to accountability and healing if we acknowledge each other’s humanity and engage with each other—even when that is the very last thing we feel like doing.
My documentary series on CNN, The Redemption Project, is based on the understanding that the verdict in the courtroom is never the end of the story. The verdict may be the end in a bunch of TV shows featuring smart prosecutors, but not in real life. The real story keeps unfolding for years, often decades, after that moment—and it doesn’t usually have a happy ending.
Just as there are no throwaway resources or throwaway species, there are no throwaway people or throwaway communities. Once we recognize the intrinsic value of every member of the human family, we can achieve justice, healing, and redemption.