Tuscaloosa, Alabama

from The Help, 2009
by Katherine Stockett


"The colored part of town seems so far away when, evidently, it’s only a few miles from the white part of town."
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Tuscaloosa, Alabama is hot.  I experienced this first-hand when I ventured to the world of Bear Bryant to visit my great friends, Amanda and Andrew, who were both in graduate programs at the university.  So when it came time to select a destination for the Maryville College Alternative Spring Break trip (which I would be leading) I figured we could all use a little more heat - and I knew Tuscaloosa was the perfect spot.  Actually, we picked Tuscaloosa because we knew that the city would still be rebuilding from the April 2011 tornadoes, and we figured there would be plenty to do (for work and play).  It also just so happened that Amanda and Andrew had their baby girl a week before our trip.  (Total coincidence that I got to hang out with them and baby Adeline. *wink*)


The trip was a great success.  The students worked hard, had fun, and ate like kings and queens.  I got some quality baby time, and I was grateful that most of the organizing work was done by our partners in Tuscaloosa.  The Presbyterian Disaster Assistance lead us to First Presbyterian Church, Tuscaloosa, who connected us with Habitat for Humanity.  Bam.  The trip was planned in full with a few phone calls. 


On Thursday night, squeezed between our work day and a dinner at Dreamland BBQ, the good people at First Presbyterian Church drove us around the city to show us the path of the tornado and the destruction that was still evident 11 months later.  Our tour guide worked as a city planner, so he really was on ground zero right when the tornado hit.  The tour was long, the devastation vast, and stories tragic.  I asked our three tour guides if the city learned anything from Katrina - if the response to the disaster was different having witnessed that event.  One woman spoke up, "Yes," she said, "the Church responded very quickly because of what happened with Katrina.  There was food everywhere.  You literally couldn't walk down the street without being offered two or three meals."  She and the other two church members elaborated that one thing they learned was that communities can care for themselves better than outsiders can.  (This was spoken as a criticism of the fumbling government intervention and thus the Democratic party, so I got a bit defensive.  Still I understand their point.)


Next, our guide spoke this sentence, which made my heart drop: "this tornado couldn't have picked a more perfect path to take out all of the poor and immigrant communities in Tuscaloosa."  


Now, my thoughts on this conversation were converging into this idea:  "If you knew, with clear borders, where the poor and immigrant communities were, where people live and are under housed, under paid, and under fed, WHY DID YOU WAIT UNTIL A TORNADO CAME THROUGH TO DO SOMETHING??"  Ok.  I realized that my anger was totally displaced; Tuscaloosa was a good town with good people who were working to make things better.  They were welcoming groups, like ours, to re-build houses for those without insurance.  They were housing and feeding us every day that we were there.  My anger rested in the fact that still today, as in the 1960's when The Help was set, the lines in our towns are still very clearly drawn.


In the end, I realized that my community (and yours, too) could learning something from Tuscaloosa just as Tuscaloosa learned from New Orleans. We do not have to wait for a disaster to help each other.  We do not have to accept that there are lines between the poor and rich, immigrants and locals.  We do not have to wait for government assistance.  If each community took care of the people in its own community, we wouldn't need FEMA to send agents to help us organize.  Just send us a check to cover some of the costs of rebuilding - we've got it covered, thank you!


Feed people NOW.  House people NOW.  Love people NOW.  Not later, when the storm has come and gone, when lives are already lost, when hopelessness overwhelms our souls, but RIGHT NOW.
(Cue Van Halen)

Death Row

From A Saint on Death Row, 2009

Thomas Cahill

"There are no millionaires along Death Row, nor will there ever be."

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I first learned about this book at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Children's Advocacy. The conference seeks to empower the church to speak for the children in our country and world who cannot speak for themselves. The line-up includes many rock stars of the advocacy and preaching world, and I absolutely love going. The Proctor institute is the closest thing I have found to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, the Beloved Community, the Church; it is a glimpse of how we are to live as people of faith.

Here at the Proctor Institute, I have heard Fred Craddock's stories of faith and hope. I have heard Marian Wright Edelman's charge that "this country doesn't have a money problem, it has a values problem." I have heard Otis Moss Jr. share stories of being imprisoned alongside Martin Luther King Jr. I have heard his son, Otis Moss III preach a prophetic word challenging the church to act. I have heard Bart Campolo's call for hope in spite of hopelessness with his words, "There are some people you can't save; there are no people you can't love." I have heard former gang member Roy Martin speak truth to a room filled with privileged people: "Hurt people hurt people."

One of the many issues that these speakers at Proctor are working to correct is the "cradle to prison pipeline" which plagues males of color in our country. Many, many external factors (unstable homes, flawed justice system, lack of role models, prison industrial complex, lack of resources) lead to this crisis, but the statistics show that 1 in 3 black males and 1 in 6 Latino males are at risk of imprisonment in their lifetime. Many young boys do not know even one male who has avoided imprisonment.

This book, written by Thomas Cahill, who wrote How the Irish Saved Civilization, explores the conviction and execution of Dominique Green. The tragedy of the tale is inevitable, and I had heard many of the statics about the flawed system already through my time at the Proctor Institute. What hit me the most was this quote: "There are no millionaires along Death Row, nor will there ever be."

Wow.

To believe that our justice system is blind is to deceive ourselves. To believe that some lives are worthless is to deceive our humanity. To believe that capital punishment is acceptable is to deceive our faith in a Christ who is ever gracious.

Another final thought from Cahill: "The way our society treats its most vulnerable and unprotected citizens is a judgment on all of us who have the money to purchase and read a book—and therefore are likely to have the money to purchase adequate legal assistance. We all need to familiarize ourselves with the injustices that have been done—and continue to be done—in our name."