THE ASBURY VOICE - AUGUST 1, 2020 #12

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THE ASBURY VOICE

Journal of the People

You are not voiceless but are often unheard

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August, 2020 # 11

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an eye out

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In This Issue:

Introduction and Purpose

Conversation on Prison and Police Abolition - Part I - Lori Rush

*Kokopelli - Charles Trott

An Interview with Fr. Chase Danford - New Pastor at Trinity Church

Letters to the Editor - Yvonne Clayton

Democratic Action - Walter Greason

Talking About Race, Must Not Cause, Not Talking About Race - Rev. Gil

Did you Know...

Archives

Introduction and Purpose of The Asbury Voice

CLICK HERE

A Three Part Series

on the Recent Conversation

on Police and Prison Abolition

Conducted by the Asbury Park Transformation and Justice Project on July 2, 2020

Part I: Why Abolition is Needed from a Clinical Perspective

Talk given by Lori Rush

The Asbury Park Transformative Justice Project sponsored a conversation on Police and Prison Abolition last month on Zoom and drew over 50 people to participate. This article is an attempt to share some of the key points of this two hour gathering. This will be the first of three articles about this conversation.

The first speaker was Lori Rush who addressed the question why abolition is needed from a clinical perspective. She was a very qualified speaker for three reasons: Lori is a licensed clinical social worker and mental health clinician who has been studying and treating trauma her whole career; She currently works at a county jail which also serves as an ICE detention center, both of which give her first hand experiences of the atrocities of the system. And, thirdly, she is the loved one of an incarcerated person.

Lori related that her brother is in prison in South Carolina. At age 19 he did something terrible - not on purpose - something he would take back if he could - and will live with the emotional consequences of that for the rest of his life. He has served 10 years of his sentence, and Lori said it has destroyed him. He is on a regular unit with a cell mate for 23 hours a day - gets out one hour a day. He maybe has 3 showers a week and food that is basically inedible. And he is exposed to constant violence from officers and inmates. We can ask what good is this doing for him?

Lori works in a county jail. To clarify, jail is where people are taken when they are arrested, as opposed to prison which is where the convicted go to serve a sentence. You can be in jail for a few hours or days waiting to go before a judge who lets you out. Or you can be there for a couple of months dealing with your case and then it is over. Or you might be there for two years while you are fighting a case. But when you are in jail you haven’t been convicted. You have not been sentenced. You are still presumed innocent.

But even in a county jail, violence is constant. Two weeks ago Lori saw a 50-year-old mentally ill patient come into the jail. She saw him standing outside his cell to be given his medications. Something triggered him and he threw his pill away saying he didn’t want it. The officer immediately sprayed him with mace in his face at close range. Lori told us if you haven’t been in the vicinity of mace spray, you cannot imagine what that must have felt like for him. Even being in a large room, like a gym, twenty minutes after mace has been sprayed is overwhelming - your eyes and throat burn and a prolonged coughing is common. This is just when traces are in the air. Prisons can be hell.

Lori wanted to speak from a clinical lens on why prisons do not make sense, why they are not effective, and why they are counterproductive. From the perspective of a mental health professional, punishment does not transform behavior. Those who design correctional institutions and implement plans are not experts on human behavior. In what other industry do we have people make such decisions who have no credentials in that subject area? Lori believes we need to bring in psychologists, therapists, and researchers into the decision making process.

The idea of punishment was an answer coming from Deterrence Theory. If we pose the possibility of the threat of a negative consequence for a given behavior, it will deter people from doing that behavior. This is not a crazy concept. It made sense to Lori for a long time. But recidivism rates are evidence it does not work.

We need to address the causes of violent behavior in order to correct it. Lori believes that most people who act out in violent ways have a history of trauma, which includes poverty and oppression. This trauma creates feelings of helplessness and rage, and creates a propensity for mental health issues, and a vulnerability to substance abuse. Add to this a lack of resources and interventions needed in environments of poverty and oppression and you have people who experience multiple levels and types of trauma. Traumatized people lack effective coping skills and healthy decision making, so they end up committing crimes and are punished for it.

But there is a reason, an explanation, a cause. So there should be a proper, appropriate, and effective solution. Caging people is not one of them.Â You don’t solve a problem by creating another problem. You don’t take someone who has committed violence and put them in a violent environment to change them. You don’t take people who have committed crimes of poverty (inability to meet their basic needs and give them more barriers to financial resources. We arrest a person for not paying child support. They do not receive any warning but are plucked from their life with no time to get their affairs in order. They cannot tell their boss they will not be there and when they don’t show up for days or weeks, they lose their jobs. Then on their release they have no job to pay any child support.

Excerpts from the Keynote Commencement Address given by Representative John Lewis

at Emory University

in 2014

Click Here

And to listen to the Address on you tube

Click Here

( “Rep John Lewis / President Obama portrait” Congressman John Lewis is embraced by President Barack Obama after receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Painting by Dan Lacey on Flickr )

THOSE SYMBOLS THAT KOKOPELLI POINT TO ARE ADINKRA SYMBOLS THAT CAN BE FOUND ON THIS SITE

CLICK HERE and Click Here

CHARLES TROTT

Interview with Rev. Chase Danford -

the New Pastor at Trinity Church

in Asbury Park.

‌

Father Chase Danford is the new pastor of Trinity Church in Asbury Park. I recently had the opportunity to do a Zoom interview with him a couple of days after he had his first live services in the Church with social distancing and a limit of 50 participants.

Fr. Chase was born in Texas and went to College at Rice University in Houston, before coming East to begin training at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. From there he moved to the New York area and his first position as a priest was in Larchmont, NY at St. John’s parish. At that time he met his now husband, Giuliano, and moved into New York City to be closer to him and began working for The International Rescue Committee which is a non-profit organization which provides opportunities for refugees and those fleeing violence and persecution to find safety and freedom in America. He spent two years with this organization before beginning a new ministry in a church setting.

This new ministry was with Grace Episcopal Church as the Associate Director where he was to spend five years. This church and an adjoining pre-K - 12th grade Episcopal school was in the Village in Manhattan near Union Square.

At this point Fr. Chase began thinking ahead and found it was time for him to lead his own parish and responded to a posting by Trinity Asbury Park for a Pastor. I asked him to explain this process which very much involved the members of the parish in their search. He first needed to read the 25 page church profile which gave him a report on its long history but also the aspirations of the members.

In New Jersey the Bishop appoints a person to be in charge of the transition and he received Fr Chase’s application and did all the background checks before handing it over to the Church Committee for them to review. So in December, Fr. Chase had a Skype interview with the Parish Committee and in January the Committee spent the day with him at Grace Church in New York. They attended all the services he conducted, and continued with the interview process.

Of course he was not the only candidate, and in February he was invited to Asbury Park and spent a week-end there talking to the wardens of the church and committee members and got the chance to see Asbury Park and speak to the Church staff and witness the different ministries.

In March he was extended the call [offered the position of pastor) and that was announced to take effect in June. He had difficulty finding housing due to the Pandemic but now he will be moving into his new housing in August.

We spent a lot of time in the interview speaking about his hopes and dreams for Trinity. He hopes that Trinity continues to embrace their commitment to social justice. He wants to have a big impact, to make a difference in the community. He said he had read the book about Asbury Park - the 4th of July - the History of the Promised Land. A history of the revitalizing of the city at different times. Now there is a strong sense of renewal happening, but the prosperity is not being shared. His goal for Trinity is that as Asbury continues to flourish, revitalize, and become a real beacon of culture and commerce, that Asbury would also be looking out for people who are being left behind and it is Fr. Chase’s desire to make Trinity part of that conversation - finding ways to be a practitioner of social justice in the community.

His hopes include inviting people to Trinity for food and shelter, as well as advocating for their needs. He mentioned how the Bishop of the Diocese invited Churches in NJ to start collaborating with the community organizing group called “Jersey Together.” In this way a broader advocacy can begin at the state level.

Racial justice is a big issue which Trinity has become involved with in the local community. Fr Chase mentioned there is a long history of racism in Asbury Park and the surrounding community. He said Trinity itself has in some ways perpetuated racism, but not the recent past, like so many white churches have. He was very clear as to how he wanted Trinity to be an agent of healing and reconciliation.

He mentioned that Trinity had recently, during the lenten season, reached out to their sister Episcopal church, St. Augustine, on the West side. A number of people in each church were participating in this venture when it had to prematurely come to an end due to Covid-19. His hope is to work together with them in the future on something meaningful for both of them

He summarized our time together by placing his hopes into three categories:

A Center for social justice. It is his desire that Trinity as a community of faith will involve themselves in the neighborhood so people will know what Trinity is all about.

A Center for spiritual life. He foresees offering not only religious services but other offerings which can make a difference for people - offering meditation and other spiritual practices.

A Center for the Arts. Asbury Park is a creative community and Trinity has a long history of having a music program and has one permanent art exhibit - the Stations of the Cross - created by multiple local artists. Fr. Chase would like to invite local artists to collaborate with Trinity in having art shows, installations, concerts and cultural readings.

His dream is to always have something going on at Trinity - whether it is about Social Justice, Spiritual Life, or the Arts - something going on 7 days a week - afternoon or evening.

He knows all of this will not happen tomorrow. Just getting past the pandemic will be huge. But these are his hopes and dreams that will be his focus over the next two or three years.

Bill Stevens

Democratic Action

by Walter Greason

Democracy only works when the people lead. Consider the phrase “the consent of the governed.” It is the heart of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It is the realization of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Republic of South Africa’s Constitution. When elected officials have contempt for the population, corruption inevitably follows. As part of the 2020 Election season, communities like Asbury Park, Red Bank, and Long Branch have unique opportunities to expand freedom for the entire world.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, the federal government created local agencies called Freedmen’s Bureaus to create a new social order that protected individual rights to life, liberty, and property. As a result, some of the most revolutionary changes in the nation’s history took root. Nothing was more profound than the creation of regional school systems that promoted a right to learn, especially among free African Americans. Similar institutions are needed worldwide today.

Globalization has fostered a widespread sense of consumerism that undermines engaged citizenship. Local churches and nonprofits have taken the lead in stopping the forces of gentrification, promoting fair access to housing, and providing emergency social service support to vulnerable families. These efforts must extend into the ways that our schools function as well as investing financial resources in the creation of new small businesses and cooperatives.

The T. Thomas Fortune Cultural Center in Red Bank has published a liberation agenda based on the work of the legendary journalist in the nineteenth century. They call for increased investment in social services by balancing state and municipal expenditures for law enforcement. They explain the need for health and wellness, food security, anti-racist education programs, and security against the ravages of the climate crisis. The agenda also calls for financial literacy and economic autonomy for every individual. It closes with a demand for reparations to undo the generations of damage to American Indians and African Americans through slavery, colonialism, and segregation.

Now is the time to act on this platform. Thousands of officials face re-election campaigns in 2020 and 2021. Everyone seeking office should speak to their support for social justice through a liberation agenda. It is the responsibility of every citizen to hold elected leaders accountable for policies that dismantle the systems of oppression that killed George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and many thousands more. Our actions are the only chances that our children have for a safe, stable future.

DR. WALTER D. GREASON, PH.D.

Associate Professor and Chair

Educational Counseling and Leadership

Dean Emeritus, The Honors School

Founding President (emeritus), The T. Thomas Fortune Foundation

Letters to the Editor:

In recent weeks, there has been many conversations around the naming of Springwood Avenue Park. I want to add my voice and remembrances to the discussion. I believe it is a misconception that this council, without regard for the community it serves, arbitrarily decided the name. This vote occurred after months long debate. In addition to the ad hoc committee, other community voices disagreed and requested the name remain. Reasons included the historical significance of Springwood Avenue, and a fear that the street name, would revert to Lake Avenue, its désignation at either end of the corridor. And maybe, other individuals were equally deserving of the honor. For example, there is the first Asbury Park African American Police Chief, Mayor and Assemblyman - Thomas Smith. A public record of the meeting and discussion can be had from the city clerk. In the end, the vote was 3-2, to keep the original name; one of the dissenting votes was mine. As the mayor has stated, everything is up for negotiation.

Yvonne Clayton

Councilperson, City of Asbury Park

[IN RESPONSE TO THE ARTICLES IN OUR JULY ISSUE CLICK HERE ]

We welcome your response to this letter - write to theasburyvoice@gmail.com

Talking about Race, Must Not Cause,

Stop Talking About Race!

Rev Gil

My excitement/fear is that the race candor of these moments requires nurturing. This is a moment of potentiality, race wise, I have not seen in my 86 years. Please don’t let it die of exhaustion.
It is difficult for some to understand the differences between Black Lives Matter, and All Lives Matter. And, between, Black Power and White Power. 400 plus years of Blacks not mattering, and Black powerlessness, requires, compels, particularity.
I have experienced here in New Brunswick, a Dialogue approach, that makes possible full participation, and deep exploration. A leader directs and times the speaking, speaking that is directed, theme wise. You may want to explore that process. I am afraid that undirected dialogue allows the Gil Caldwell’s of the world to talk, sometimes engaging in suppressed anger, that when unsuppressed, suppresses the contributions of others.
This moment of race clarity, must not assume a quick fix. Hopefully we are launching discussion, reflection and action, that will be a long marathon, not a sprint. Remember the foolish “post racial” talk following the Obama election? A Biden election will be a beginning, not an ending.
Patience, Patience, Patience with our multi-racial reality. Don’t be surprised at the surprise some had/have re: the police killing of George Floyd. Allow space for those of all races, who are not where you are. To be an anti-racist is to be an evangelist, seeking converts.
If New York could name a tennis facility and park, after Arthur Ashe and Louis Armstrong, why can’t Asbury Park name a Park after a Black Doctor? “Just Asking”.

Did You Know

[This portion of our newsletter many times comes from sharings in the Asbury Dialogue Group - We are grateful to many people like Kerry Butch, Duanne Small Polli Schildge, and Jennifer Sorios who have contributed in this way]

... That Daniel Weeks wrote an article, From Riot to Revolt: Asbury Park in July, 1970 Click Here

... That Caroline Randall Williams wrote an opinion piece for the NYTimes entitled: "You want a Confederate Monument? My Body is a Conservative Monument Click Here

... That Jonathan Hollowway was named as the First Black President of Rutgers University Click Here

... That CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets) in Eugene, Oregon responds to 911 calls that wouldn't necessarily require police assistance Click Here

... That the NYTimes posted an article by Trymaine Lee on the "Vast Wealth Gap, Driven by Segregation, Redlining, Evictions, and Exclusion, Separate Black and White America." Click Here

... That Save Asbury's Waterfront [SAW] sent out a press release about celebrating the Rebuilding of the Historic Boardwalk on the North End Click Here

... That Book Clubs are being formed at the Asbury Book Cooperative Click Here

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