This topic firsthand with much authority and much sensitivity. Randall horton is a poet having won or Gwendolyn Brooks poetry award and National Endowment of the arts in literature. He teaches at the university of newhaven and serves on the board of directors of panamerican prison writing program, it is his life before these distinguished honors that gives him the authority to write this powerful book about forgiveness and what it is like in the Prison Industrial Complex both during and after and the effect that writing has. Michael mckay is a writer having published a book on the palestinian israeli conflict. We are fortunate to have randall and michael with us today. They will speak and do some reading, and then we will have a few minutes towards the end of the hour to take your questions, and i will turn over to did you a critical first, michael . To michael. Thanks everybody for being here. The title of my book is where the river bends considering forgiveness in the lives of prisoners. The first thing i did want to address is why i as a white son of a doctor who growth in rural appalachia decided he could write a book on forgiveness in prison. It somewhat presumptuous project i think but i found myself skip over most of my life story, i found myself studying conflict resolution and reconciliation in belfast in Northern Ireland 20122013. As i was reading about forgiveness and reconciliation for one of my major papers i noticed there was essentially nothing written about what currently incarcerated people thought about forgiveness. I found out to be utterly fast dating senior people in prison have received and perpetuated some of lifes worst farms and that theyre living in a system up on forgiveness. It seems curious nothing have been written about that. I thought i had the ability to write something about it both from an academic perspective and because i had already spent four years volunteering at riverbend maximum security prison in national for those india, its where tennessees death row is. I had a relationship that i thought i could have those conversations. I decided to write my thesis on the subject edited the masterpieces and doubledigit lead after my master degree and turned it into the book. Disagrees i thought i would do is because it fit into my larger vocation which is presenting a platform for the telling of stories that people rarely hear, that we often, many of us might live the life from above, a position of privilege and goodness a lot of stories that exist from below as was talked about. I want to thomas levet proximity to those of which of sort of experience and see in particular about presenters what their stories and thoughts might teach us about forgiveness. So this book is basically for such as. The first part is an academic analysis, a map of the forgiveness of terrain, how should we talk about forgiveness. Then i do 14 stories of prisoners both at river bend and at the tennessee prison for women. These are stories of people who have as i say received and given some of lifes worst harms. Story of a good friend of mine tony vic hu and wrestling with his identity as a gay man in feeling that wasnt acceptable ended up killing two wives, killed his first want to try to get out of marriage and ended up killing his second wife. He is now in prison for life. There are stories of tonya who endeavor to protect her sister from an abuser committed an act of violence that had edited consequences. The story of jamie who suffered much bullying and marginalization in school and became one of tennessees first school shooters. For the story of shelley and i want to read very opening of her story to get a taste of some of the stories are like. When shelley had to be the papers containing the first draft of her story and the thought of forgiveness which emerged from it, she avoided specifics about her past. Are opening words though devastated me. I am nobody. I have always been nobody. The only thing that was special about me was that i was a pretty child. Unfortunately, the very thing that often makes you special is what makes you a target. As i continued reading standing against a whitewashed hallway wall at tennessee prison for women, my body slowly slid to the floor as i encountered references for a lifetime of sexual abuse. Then came the following paragraph. It was the last abuse that truly broken. I have never heard of gbsd and didnt know if stockholm syndrome until i was diagnosed with them after the crime. It is been a little over 17 years now and i still have nightmares, crushing anxieties and more than anything else, the way to guilt if i didnt a stronger person, if i wouldve taken the abuse in times like i was supposed to, then my best friend would still be alive. And i will invite you to get the book if you want to read the rest of the story. So stories like that, completely devastate you and break your heart but then also moving stores also help you put her heart back together again. After that section of stores theretheres another section bw do those fit into that map that was created and for section . And it take we section taking stock, what do we learn from this . In the appendix to our five stories of my time as a volunteer prison chaplain at river bend where worked on the mentalhealth side in the most violent units in the prison. I tell five stories up particularly violent encounters and offer prayers at the in as an exercise in how do we pray in speech and of god in the midst of such devastation, in the midst of health. So thats the focus of the book midst of hell. For the purpose of this conversation because i want my copanelists took most of the time, the question i wanted to wrestle with was, the thesis i guess if forgiveness is valuable, valuable, if it is a virtue towards which we should be striving, then we should take serious issue with our prison system. Serious issue with the prison system. Because prisons are uninterested in forgiveness. They are uninterested been using. They are uninterested in reconciliation, uninterested in transformation and rehabilitation. They are interested in retribution. Retribution if forgiveness are entirely incompatible notions. Exile, temporary exile is not incompatible with forgiveness but retribution isnt compatible with forgiveness. Just to reference what a mary mentioned at the intro, from my personal express i spent four and a half years volunteering readily at river bend and tennessee prison for them without any issue. Then i finally had enough of the violence of the prison system against the prisoners. Answer organized some folks to protest what other policies the department of corrections against tennis prisoners werent general population with safest of all the prisoners and a system of control and punishment that would be put on one of the units that have not had a single violent street incident. On my First Defense that permanently banned me from river bend and two f. Years later, so this summer i tried to get on a visitation list to a nearby prison about an hour away and i was denied because they still of label me as Security Threat to the institution. I hope that tells you something about the weight our prison system works, that if you try to create community, if you try to humanize, try to break down the walls that divide us, if you try to encounter the other not as a criminal and as a prisoner but has another brother and sister in need of healing and in love, that is a threat to the secure the of the institution. What i found about prisons, prison is a place that holds people captive to a moment. It both holds their body and their emotions, to a single moment, to a single action. Often even to a few seconds of their life. It defines them by a few seconds. Not indicators of everyone. Some people have perpetuated the same harms over and over again like a friend when he was convicted of having molested at least 26 young boys as a catholic priest. There are situations like that. There are others who have a mental breakdown, who snapped and commit a terrible act in a few seconds other like and are forever judged by those moments. It makes so forgiveness difficult in prison in particular because a few of the things that forgiveness needs is that it entails is it entails storing yourself into writing a nutritive, about to life and about the life of the other in your situation. So that it is counting a single stories we often craft of ourselves and about others. Theres a great novelist who has this brilliant talk you should all watch called the danger of a single story. She talks about single stories are stories that depict only one side to a person or an event. A single story produced stereotypes. The problem she says is not that theyre untrue necessary but they are incomplete. Theres always more to the story. Our job is to look to complete the narrative and so often indicates a violence, the case of conflict and in harm we crept single stories whether of ourselves, or the other as a victim and perpetrator. Forgiveness is about changing those character descriptions, changing the storyline so we are no longer cast in those roles permanently. Its about humanizing ourselves anin the other, avoiding a singe stories and its about not forgetting the harm but also not being defined by that harm. Not letting that be the description of who we are forever. I will read you just a little bit from what other guys on the inside and jacob davis was really different of mine and a brilliant, brilliant man. I got to teach at river bend as part of the universitys life program for education to offer associate and bachelor degrees to men and women in prison. Jacob was in the first cohort at river bend when i got to teach at the edit forgiveness and reconciliation. He wrote one paper for class, his final paper and it was so good i set off to academic publisher in england and was published as an academic paper. These are the kind of mice with keeping locked in prison. Brilliant guy. And he was 18, 17 or 18 a senior in high school down in southern tennessee, he got caught in a love trying to and a mental break due to humiliation, bullying and trucks and all kinds of things he snapped and went about again and he murdered his rival at the school, shot him three times in children. Jacob was given a life sentence with the possibility of parole which in tennessee in case you didnt know means he has to serve a minimum of 51 calendar years. Exactly. Thats life sentence with the possibility of parole is a minimum of 51, one of the harshest in the country. Jacob went to prison at 18 and he goes up for parole in 2049 and he will be 70 when he goes up for parole. Not when his release, but when he goes up for parole. So he said in a conversation with him, i fully understand societies perspective that they cant just let people victimized loved ones but i had to call for reform of the system. Whenever forgiveness i found, it is in spite of the system. The system does facilitate any kind of forgiveness. It is focused like a laser on vengeance, motivated out of fear. It uses suffering and pain to punish suffering and pain. It chains me to my pastor forgiveness in christian theology tries to offer new garments but the system chains you to the mud into. It really makes it impossible to fully forgive yourself. He goes onto say, if none of the people involved in the event are the same now. Most dont even know me anymore and i dont know them. We have no effect on each other. At the system is determined to take us back to the event. And that i am now did not do it. The person who did do it wasnt in a normal state. So if i forgive myself i forgive my old self. Identity is quite slippery. It was like the butterfly effect, a billion coincidence had to happen that day for that event to occur. And nobody can change what happened. There such futility in chaining yourself to an event and bringing into the future. We have to recognize we are destroying ourselves. I wish my direct and indirect victims could forgive for their own sake and let us much as they can with what they have left. We all have to face down the specter of suffering and appreciate that its wonderful to be alive. I can live here in prison forever, but i cannot be changed that event. It cannot define me. So the question i kept hearing from folks in prison and was essentially how do i find and give forgiveness in the place so diametrically opposed to it . That wants to change it to the mud in those garments of forgiveness. And again i would invite you to read the book if youd like to hear more about that question. But i want to wrap up my time and turned over to randall. I want to redo this last section, my major take away from the book which is dealing with the question what does this say about us as a society that we sit in explicit or in tacit support of the system of dehumanization and retribution but what does that say about us . I will offer this final reading. And engaging that question. In writing and researching for this book and the previous volunteer work i witnessed prison conditions first and converse with insiders and staff and served the relevant literature. All of this revealed a deeply disturbing nature of a racist, classist, arbitrary system oriented towards profit rather than rehabilitation. More than 95 of all of those in prison would be released back into society. We are wise to care about the security of our communities but we are confused about the ideal methods for ensuring that security. James gilligan, psychiatrist, shows through Statistical Research and professional experience punishment does not deter violence as much as provoke it. Given the retributive a session of the current american system it is Little Wonder that youth recidivism rate, the rates to which people return to prison, its Little Wonder those rates hover steadily between 5070 . Over half of the people released will go back. If we call a department of corrections provides a definition, it is failing miserably. Sesuch unacceptable and dangeros rates are unnecessary and preventable through we imagining the purpose and the practice of prison. I often wonder what would happen to my friends when they get out of prison and return to society. How will they be received . Do we speak of incarceration as paying one debt to society, we could be done in that sense upon return many free to men and women cannot vote or sit on juries and they can legally suffer housing, education and employment discrimination due to the felony records. Or punishment continues long after release from prison. But im interested in social forgiveness for prisoners. If forgiveness growth our health and sanity at the individual level, it stands to reason it does the same thing socially. To function as cultures of violence, retribution, vengeance and shame is a compromise our social health. To begin this journey toward social and personal forgiveness and cultivating a healthy society, we must get proximate to those weve categorically condemned and listen to their stories. If we tell and hear different stories, once of remorse and redemption, transformation and broken humanity, forgiveness and reconciliation, we make unimaginative the world what even the prisoners are forgiven and set free. And so the last piece is the next paragraph, and the men are making earlier jacob davis, a guy in prison for murder, the love triangle, he wrote a piece called who we are and what we want. Its a plea for understand from the outside world and want to end with the words of one of the insiders. This is what jacob davis. We are living question marks. What is the point of all this . Are we still human . Is there any value in our lives . Is there any forgiveness, any retention for those who have truly repented . If not, what does that say about us all . We are human like you want to show that. We are your brothers and fathers and cousins and uncles and sons. We need help in order to construct a positive future in community with all peaceful people. Why in the name of all human good in the future of our society we do not help us in such an endeavor . We are the prodigal sons. We have been told it doesnt matter if we repent, that we will not have a chance to give anything back and that theres no return no matter what. We come back to the gates anyway in the name of peace and hope and love. Where else would we go . For human beings life means forever seeking a home and the love of family and community. Now dont exist for us other than the one from which were exiled. We know some of you will kick and spit on us no matter how to our word or help your our hearts. We know you are not evil, only afraid and to sleep. Wakeup your wakeup your we are not monsters. Here as knocking. We will come back to you again and again. Where else could we go . Thank you. [applause] answered the phone at 10 p. M. Hello . Harlem, new york. Respond with okay. Listen, be attentive when you learn you died in a hail of gunfire at the intersection of minnesota avenue and east capitol street in the nations capital. After thinking, thank old College Roommate for calling. Ignored the could you as a hook, then they can do it by on the street, heading up. You can and cant believe the truth simultaneously. Maybe this will memorialize the image you will never forget in which is already forgotten haq. Before the blackbird echoed thing again sure windowless steel, wake up. Directly to the mahogany desk between two windows, sit and the browns willful chair, star of the building opposite your building. Rearrange papers that dont need rearranging twice. Open digital to the name written last night, disco. Remember the cell doors opening after serving 18 months for three felonies in Fairfax County adult Detention Center. Five hours after that release, meet disco wheeling and a team through your basement on a handcart. Out of the wall with metal chains and pickup truck, he had pulled the money machine. He did that. This is your introduction. Turn on the computer. Type theodoric blandford in the search box. Click the magnifying class. Expect to be surprised even though you know what the results will bring. Dont be surprised when you scroll through maryland double homicide suspect shot, killed in d. C. One lone bird outside your window flies backwards added a become an rate of speed while the world moves forward. The bird is ready. Look for balance in the oddity. Note that double homicide is five syllables. Five delivered plazas before, dammit. Remember you knew the suspect shooter slashed the killer. Suspend court in your imagination. Ad for indeterminate words to formerly the phrase hold court in the street. This is how he will die. Holding court in the street. Prophetic. After reading that the now deceased wife had wanted a divorce, reduce it was because of drugs to visualize the wife insisted just before death in their double wide. Tried to make sense of blood spilled on the carpet. The red is deafening. Screen. Wait for the bus to stop because someone rang the wrong buzzer. Theres always an echo after the blessing. Even after it does is again, dont answer it. It is not for you. Keep reading the online article, but more specif