The opening reception of "Breathing Room: Journeys of Self-Exploration" took place on Saturday at Morton Contemporary Gallery. "Breathing Room" features the incredible works of lifelong friends Lance Wiggs, Wesley Clark,
Jonathan P. Baird: Suave and the case against juvenile lifers
Recently I listened to the seven-part podcast
Suave. It tells the remarkable story of David Luis “Suave” Gonzalez. A Latino juvenile lifer, Suave had been on what he described as a suicide mission. Convicted of the first-degree murder of a 13-year-old boy, Suave had received a sentence of life without parole when he was 17.
A hellion for his first ten years in prison (he spent 8 years in solitary confinement), things dramatically changed for Suave when he persuaded prison authorities to invite the journalist Maria Hinojosa to speak at Graterford State Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania where he was incarcerated. He had heard Hinojosa on the radio and was intrigued because she was Latina. This was in 1993.