WALKING IN GRACE, Louise Annarino,9-27-2014
Being human is terrifying. Being aware carries the burden of striving to be correct. To err invites injury to ourselves, to those with whom we share the planet, and to the planet itself. We also fear others who err; and even more so, those who would do us harm. It is a scary world we live in, internally and externally. And yet, living in this the world is such an amazing experience, majestic and breathtakingly beautiful. Our world is of such beauty that we transcend our fears most of the time. How we do so is both delightful and comforting.
We laugh. What a gift. Laughter dismisses fear to such an extant that some of us lose muscle control and “fall down laughing”, making ourselves totally vulnerable to all the scary stuff we know surrounds us.
We cry. What a gift. Tears reduce us to a molten mass falling into one another’s arms with no fear of retaliation or control by the other. We are most vulnerable when we laugh and when we cry. Yet, these moments are often our most memorable, and most satisfying. These are moments of grace.
We can chose to live in grace,even when we are not experience the comforting joy of another’s comedic safety net for our fears, nor the calming security of another’s embrace. We can choose to live in grace when everything around us shouts “danger.” Living in grace allows us to transcend fear. I refuse to be afraid. I choose to live in grace.
When I was a prison social worker I worked in a women’s maximum security facility housing inmates whom society so feared that our courts locked these women away. Visiting those locked into the most restrictive cell block, maximum security, was discouraged. This short-term lock up was to isolate a particularly intractable inmate who had behaved too violently to remain within the general population. They were not permitted to leave the cell for any reason. They were left alone for days or weeks. As a social worker, I believed such an event was a “teachable moment”,when I could perhaps break through the bravado and masks of an inmate who normally would not welcome my company or conversation.
These women in max were starving for human contact. Thus began my frequent visits to max. The first day, the single guard on duty did not know what to do with me, having never received visitors before. But, he unlocked the corridor door and accompanied me to the first cell in which a woman from my caseload was locked up. After about five minutes of standing by the door he asked how long I would be. “Thirty minutes” was too long for him to stand around so I suggested he let me into the cell and he could then go back to his seat. His eyebrows shot to his head as he suggested to me it was not safe. I asked the woman, “He thinks you will hurt me if he lets me inside alone with you.Will you harm me?” After a short pause to consider, she said,”no.” The guard then locked me into the maximum security cell and I told him I would call him when I was ready to leave. After I left that cell, women from other case loads called out my name as I passed by asking to speak with me. I visited every woman in max that day and every few days after. The guard and I followed the same protocol each time: lock me inside, then come when I call to let me out.
The moments I spent locked into maximum security with the most violent offenders in the prison were moments of grace. We shared laughter and tears. We explored the pain and fear that led to the violence. I tried to “always leave them laughing,” and living in grace.
The write-ups for violence on my caseload diminished and extinguished. I was called in for a discussion with the Associate Director and charged with being too permissive. How else to explain why the women for whom I was responsible were no longer getting into trouble? Another bone of contention was my crisis intervention strategy. I had instructed my caseload to yell out “Call Annarino!” whenever they were about to become violent with a guard or other inmate, instead of letting the violent feelings flare into harmful words or actions. Before long the guards knew to call me and everyone waited somewhat peacefully and guardedly, until I arrived. At which time, I explained everyone involved would get a chance to tell their truth without interruption. I dismissed the usual onlookers hoping for a good fight, promising to stop by their work or class site later to fill them in on what happened after they left. This substantially reduced the risk of group pressure and blustering bravado which often led to mass violence. Once only the critical participants were left, the preaching the truth was followed my mediated conversation.
It did not occur to me that armed guards would find it embarrassing for a 22 year old woman weighing 102 pounds could protect them from harm with mere words. Just before I lost my job, I was told my job was not to empower inmates but to treat them as the “dog chained up in the back yard: when they howl, shut them up.” Instead I had given them a voice. It did not seem to matter that their voice was calm, peaceful and truth-seeking rather than violent curses accompanied by physical attacks. They had learned to live in grace, which seemed to scare people even more. This is the power of non-violence. When we let go of fear, we find truth and the truth is what sets us free.
annarino writes 
A LETTER TO US ALL
Dear Us:
Did you ever hear of the Golden Rule? “Treat others as you would be treated.” When asked which of the ten commandments Moses shared with the Israelites was the most important, Jesus advised questioners to “Love others as I have loved you.” In the 60s, even non-believers of any religion, or of even the existent of God, followed the precept “Lead with your heart.” “Flower children” believed in love, for everyone, at all times. And those were turbulent times. We watched freedom riders maimed and killed, their busses set on fire, their murdered bodies hidden and buried in shallow graves. We watched the perpetrators of violence go free; the Citizen Councils ( marketing change for KKK) often included law enforcement and local judges. This is the America currently referred to when Trump supporters urge us all to “Make America Great Again.” They no longer wear white robes nor hide their faces. They wear red ties, dark suits and sometimes red hats.They pretend to be news anchors on FOX News and elsewhere. They pretend to be president like Elon Musk. The delivery system of hate may have changed; the racism and sexism have not. We are experiencing a backlash to the progress made over the past 50 years. It took 50 years for it to grow this strong.
I was a resident student advisor (RA) at Lincoln Tower on the OSU campus in Columbus, Ohio in the late sixties and early 70s. I was also a student activist. I had to become one because I believed in the Golden Rule. I watched Black students, Jewish students and women students derided and demeaned. I was privy to racist commentary because white students assumed they could say them to my white face with my full agreement. White men also felt safe making sexist comments to me despite the fact I was a woman. As an Italian-American I was sometimes mistaken for Jewish and heard my share of anti-semitic remarks. Much of the time such hate-talk was passed off as a joke. Whenever I heard the joke I stopped the speaker and explained nothing they said was funny, nor factual. I demanded such language never be used while in my presence. Those who just joined in to feel safe in the crowd became serious and apologized. The bullies did not apologize. But they shut up. “Stand up to shut them up” became part of every day life on campus. That is activism at its core.
I had a few empty suites on my floor due to an on-going criminal investigation. A mentally ill student was on trial for arson, having set fire in a suite the year before. Once the case was resolved, those suites were re-opened and spaces filled, as were other vacancies on my floor. Who moved in to those spaces? Black women looking for a safe space. Some had repeatedly been locked out of their rooms by white roommates. Several had threatening notes nailed to their door; threats to rape or kill them because they were Black. Most were ostracized and demeaned daily by white roommates. Their complaint to Student Affairs fell on deaf ears. When the spaces opened on my floor, they found refuge there.
Our dorm was typical for OSU where Black students made up a tiny percentage of the student population. My floor was unique. I held floor meetings to discuss expectations that we would all follow the Golden Rule. When I saw or heard of a racial incident I immediately intervened. Soon, I was doing racial mediation on a regular basis. Black women entered the elevator and experienced white women moving close to the emergency call button, with hand hovering, ready to cry for help from women just like themselves returning exhausted from a day of classes ? Time for mediation! Call everyone together and talk it through. Day after day. Incident after incident. It was exhausting for the Black women, and the Black men who visited them, to face daily racial challenges and outright discrimination.
Another RA and two students worked with me to develop a racial mediation program in our dorm. Whenever the Student Judicial Council was handed a case involving a white student and a Black student in dispute, it was handed off to us to mediate the conflict. Our efforts were not always welcomed, but we persisted. Incidents of violence, write-ups to judiciary, and racial conflict decreased. Today, this program would be outlawed by the President who gleefully extorts OSU by threatening loss of education grants and federal funds for programs and research. OSU has caved to the bullies. OSU is not standing up to shut up the racism. It would cost money. And money is god in America, and on college campuses.
OSU is caving to racists and bullies again. And, not just OSU. Columbia University, indeed nearly all colleges and universities, if not all, are caving to racist bullies under the guise of following the law, accepting the lawless and illegal actions of the current administration. Following the law would require universities to protect the free speech rights of faculty and students, to abide by employment contracts and civil service laws to protect both administrative employees and faculty. Universities with law schools had readily-available experts to stand up, speak out and take action. I was an Associate Director of Law at Ohio University. There is a national organization of such attorneys. Why are they so silent? Why have university presidents and provosts not joined arms to defend their campuses against illegal searches and seizures of students? Why did Columbia University not come to the aid of Mahmoud Khalil and his family? If they did so in any way, it was neither apparent nor sufficient.
The Poster Boy President leading the racist mob of greedy Americans spoke at the DOJ recently. His racist and personal attacks on lawyers, prosecutors and judges, was accepted and even cheered. Racism and greed cross all boundaries and sexual preferences, exist within every profession, religion and community group. It is a constant and persistent threat to the principles of democracy. Those whose racism had been laid low, who crawled under rocks to hide their sins, have crawled back out, empowered by the greed for wealth and power, threatened by those they spurn who have finally found success on a more equal path, and undermined by their own sense of failure despite the promise of an American Dream. Instead of blaming the greedy power-brokers of industry, banking and finance, politics and education they blame their fellow victims. Their racism blinds them to truth, and they willingly embrace false-hoods and disinformation. They would not recognize a fact if it stared them in the face. They would prefer to attack the fact and the experts offering the truth of the fact.
As a lawyer, as an educator, as a writer, I am heart-broken over the loss of my country, my Constitution and its guarantees of personal freedom for all persons who are in this country…no matter where they came from, or how they got here. That is the promise of America. That is the American Dream. Shopping for cheap goods because your existence only matters if those power-brokers can make a buck off you cannot fill the place freedom once filled within the American heart and psyche. Woke? Woke is what is required to survive the on-slaught against a free people who simply want to find a good-paying job, buy a house, feed and educate their family. The power-brokers want us to stay asleep. Like children, we are angels in our sleep, causing them no discomfort, and quietly staying out of their way as they take over our economy, our government institutions, our military, our banking system, our educational systems and local/public schools…even our post office!
Wake up, my fellow lawyers, my fellow professors, my fellow school teachers, my fellow social workers, my fellow counselors, my fellow retail workers, my fellow waitresses and caterers, my fellow babysitters, my fellow students, my fellow Catholics and people of faith, my fellow Americans. Wake up and stay woke! We have work to do, if we can stay awake to do it loudly and persistently. This is no time to lie down and feign sleep. God knows, none of us sleep well theses days.
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