Where Love and Injustice Meet by Elizabeth Renter

Where Love and Injustice Meet

There’s something powerful when a government has the ability to take away, not just your constitutional rights, but your human rights. Your right to come and go as you please, to form relationships with whom you please, and to reach for goals like home ownership, employment, and entrepreneurship. When all of that can be taken away with the strike of a gavel (which it can and does), that gavel and the people standing behind it hold great power indeed.

In daily conversations, tweets, and even my only two personal blogs I waver between promoting extreme positivity and enlightenment, and uncovering injustices and outrage at the Babylon system. I’ve had the twisted-privilege of covering some fairly high profile stories and interviewing mothers whose sons were taken away by police brutality. I was never a victim of crime and I never had anyone close to me spend time in prison growing up. But from the time I was a child, the balance (or imbalance) of power between the people of this country and those said to protect and serve them has fascinated me.

When I speak of the “government” the “Babylon system”, I’m talking about every person and agency that could ultimately play a role in stripping someone of their rights. This is the lawmakers, the judges, the police, the prosecutor, the prison administrators, and everyone in between. They are all cogs in a broken machine and while the individuals may not be all-bad they help perpetuate a system flawed to its very core.

I guess I have an extremely optimistic view on life. I really believe that the Divine love within us all makes us inherently good. But it’s the ego, the flesh, and the human-ity of us that causes us grief. This ego, when fed with power, has the potential to override any feelings of love and goodness for our fellow man. And when a machine is designed to remove power or human rights from one set of people and hand the power to another, the collective ego of that machine becomes a monster.

It’s not a reach to surmise that we spend more on prison uniforms than school books. We hear about failing schools on the news and see it in our children, all the while the government invests millions in state of the art prisons. Our priorities as people have become so out of whack that we are more interested in the feeding the hungry prison system than feeding the minds and spirits of our youth.

At any given time in your hundreds of channels, you can likely find dozens of shows regarding the criminal justice system. COPS, Cold Case, Jail, America’s Most Wanted, The First 48, Law & Order, CSI, and nearly every Lifetime movie—they all play to our fear of crime, our need to see how both the “bad guys” and the “good guys” operate. We thrive on the drama. But all of this “entertainment” has a disastrous effect. We live in fear that we might be the next victim—to the point where we don’t speak to our neighbors or smile at strangers. And we are more likely to be okay with tougher sentencing laws and questionable practices by the police and courts—anything to keep us “safe”.

Over the years we’ve created a crime culture that’s done nothing but divide the community and empower the system. All in the name of safety, we are destroying our society.

The United States is the most incarcerated nation in the world. In the entire world. Per capita, we imprison more of our people than any other nation, even those considered war-torn and third-world. Ironic for the “Land of the Free”, don’t you think? And to the surprise of many, crime has been falling for the last few decades. Some cities are reporting their lowest violent crime rates since the 1960s. (You wouldn’t know that by watching television.)

It’s particularly interesting to me that the current recession is leading some states to reconsider their sentencing laws and the tough-on-crime policies written in the 1990s. We even have Republicans (known for the lock ‘em away rhetoric) reconsidering prison time for nonviolent offenses. But what’s interesting about this is that it’s only the recession that’s spurring change. Sure we can be happy that some change is on the horizon anyways but it hurts me to the core that the immorality of the current state of our criminal justice system doesn’t make lawmakers blink. Not once. Despite what they may say pre-election, once they are handed the power most don’t care about the racial imbalances, the destruction of communities, or even the causes of the criminal behavior they are so worried about punishing. No, they’re worried about the cash.

I am no longer shocked about the cases of unarmed black men being killed by police. When I read about a man wrongly incarcerated for his entire adult life and then freed, released to a community that’s moved on without him, I don’t bat an eye. I am hurt but not surprised when cops raid a home and kill a sleeping 7 year old girl. These things don’t shock me anymore but they anger, sadden, and motivate me. I get that some people have just grown accustomed to it; they’ve accepted that this is how things are. But I refuse. Acceptance of this perversion of humanity is a perversion in itself. If you’re okay with saying “but that’s how it’s always been” or you don’t want to talk about it because “it won’t change anything” then maybe you’re to blame too.

Apathy is a disease. Sure talking or writing may not have the same impact as getting out there and getting involved. But sitting there and saying nothing is inaction at its finest. Without awareness there can be no change. Without knowledge there can be no action. Until we accept that the status quo isn’t working and make a collective effort to inform the masses, we can never expect it to deviate from the twisted norm. How can I come from a place of positivity and love while promoting revolutionary thoughts and discussing the virtual raping of a people? Because love won’t let me sit back and allow it to happen. Because love isn’t just a thing—it’s a verb. And action without love isn’t just uninspired, it’s ultimately ineffective.