I’ll just read a couple of pages…
That’s what I told myself when I picked up Bryan Stevenson’s book. For me, this would be the third time reading it. My Mom told me she and a group of friends were reading Just Mercy for their women’s reading group. Something I jumped at the opportunity to be part of. I loved the idea of building on our relationship as a family through shared experience, but I also knew reading the book for them may be a life changing paradigm shift. The sort of thing where your understanding of the world is transformed because you got to see a world that you didn’t know existed in real life.
Like Bryan’s Grandmother said, “You can’t understand most of the important things from a distance. You have to get close”.
Just Mercy is like that. It pulls the sheets off of injustice and shows that there is a blurry line between being guilty of a crime and becoming a victim to unjust punishment itself. Reading the book with my Mom’s book club was something I was really looking forward to. I enjoyed Just Mercy thoroughly and Bryan’s perspective and storytelling was unparalleled.
Just Mercy seemed like it followed me over time. And I don’t quite grab it off the shelf. Whenever it shows up, I don’t chose it, it chooses me.
The first time I ever read it was through a book club facilitated through the University of Washington. The professor Georgia Roberts donates her time to come down to Stafford Creek’s Men’s Facility. She uses her own money to buy the books that she shares with a small group of inmates. The books she chooses are meant to be thought provoking and culturally expansive.
I’m not even in the book club itself but I have a thirst for knowledge. I’ll casually wait for one of the existing book club members to finish their copy, and then ask them if I can read it. If it’s good enough for a UW professor, it should contain some valuable gems right? Lucky for me I don’t have to go too far. My cellmate Matt is in the club.
The second time I read it was part of a new literacy program Superintendent Margret Gilbert wanted to start at our facility. At Stafford Creek, she was a innovator in her own right. She was the first black woman to run a facility in the State of Washington. Being first is not always an awesome predicament Margaret had her own challenges. Decades of prejudice and systemic racism had set the stage for her to make a choice. She could choose to fade into her position and not “rattle the cage”. Or she could take the road less travelled, and she could be a champion of change.
She had a fiery personality and a hands on approach to working with the prison community. Where most facility superintendents would rarely be seen on the community grounds, Margaret could be seen everyday. Not only was she seen, she would actively source the community for what was needed most: Asking us how to do it, leading discussions, facilitating committee meetings, and creating change
Collectively, she united people and involved everyone. She created new classes. Expanded diversity within the facility. She piolted new classes that offered education in the IMUs. The Intensive Management Units were considered the most dangerous places in the state. Filled with cast away people that would toil away in isolation for being too dangerous or too problematic to be anywhere else. She gave them chances for education and redemption.
She didn’t stop there. Previously barren prison landscapes became gardens. Rows of flowers decorated the inside of the prison with explosions of color and life.
She was enamored with the small book club Georgia Roberts ran. She asked herself, “Why can’t everyone here have a chance to read and expand their horizons?”
From that thought, an all inclusive literacy group was formed. In it, inmates came up with the most influential books ever written, and then they read them together in a discussion group. It was called Stonecatchers. The literacy group was aptly named after Bryan Stevenson’s sixteenth chapter, The Stonecatchers’ Song of Sorrow. A chapter about mercy and forgiveness.
I read Bryan’s book the second time in Stonecatchers. We all wrote letters to Bryan thanking him for his compassion and commitment to change. Later we shot a small documentary facilitated by Gilda Shepard from Evergreen Community College. The documentary was on our life experiences and Bryan’s landmark case, Miller vs Alabama. The case was on juveniles and the injustice of lengthy sentences for people that are not fully formed. Many of the men in the documentary were directly impacted by Bryan’s case. Many have even returned home since the filming of the documentary.
When I got Bryan’s book for the third time, I thought I’d only read a couple of pages. The moment I picked it up I couldn’t put it down. A surge of memories, feelings, and old personal experiences washed over me. Even now, I only stopped to write this, before I delve back into Just Mercy…