Spirit in Action
WNPJ Awards - Esther Heffernan & Prison Reform
The Wisconsin Network for Peace & Justice will be presenting its Lifetime Achievement award on October 3, 2009. One awardee, Esther Heffernan, is a Dominican nun and Sociology prof at Edgewood College, with a lifetime concern for prison reform. Steve Burns, program coordinator for WNPJ also joins us.
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- 20 Sep 2009
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[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ Today for Spirit in Action, we'll be looking at an organization called the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. It came to my attention that there'll be bestowing lifetime service recognition on two Wisconsin activists on October 3rd. So I decided to interview the two worthy awardees. Plus, I thought it would be a good time to learn a bit more about the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. WNPJ. Shortly we'll speak with Esther Hefmann, a Dominican nun and sociology professor, active in prison reform. And next week we'll visit with Joe Elder, a peace activist who has been able to aid quiet, non-governmental diplomacy efforts in Asia. But first, let's learn a bit about WNPJ with a member of their staff, Steve Burns. Steve, welcome to Spirit in Action. Oh, it's good to be here. What's your position with Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice? I'm the program coordinator. And what does that mean in the real world that you're the program coordinator? We're not a very bureaucratic organization, so we all just try and share in the work and get everything done. You know, organizing events, trying to do outreach to the community, supporting our member groups in any kind of initiative they undertake. Perhaps they should explain a little bit about what the network does. That sounds like a good idea. What does Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice do? Well, we're a coalition of 172 organizations around the state, working on many different issues, many peace groups, but also groups working on immigrant rights, prison issues, women's rights, the environment. And as a network, our main duty is to support the work of our member groups. So if a member group is trying to promote a particular piece of legislation or bring people to an event, our job is to publicize that as best we could, and help to make connections between different organizations so that the peace movement and the immigrant rights community, for example, have some relationship and can help to support each other's struggles. Where does Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice come from, and why was it founded? Was it just because we had the need to bring these diverse organizations? You say 170 of them together? Yes, we were founded in 1991, and it was shortly after the end of the first Gulf War, and I think there was a recognition that obviously the peace movement hadn't been successful in preventing that war, but also that there were many issues on which we needed to work together if we were going to be effective. Questions in the environment, the growing prison industry, which was growing very rapidly at the time and still is. And so a meeting was convened actually at the state capital. People came from around the state and agreed that there was a need for this organization. I mean, we've been growing ever since then. So with 170 different members, organizations, how can you make decisions? Is this a top-down? Does it come from the bottom? Do you get all 170 of them in a room and say, "Okay, now let's decide?" Well, we do an annual assembly, so we do, once a year, try to bring together a member group. It'd be great if we got all 172 member groups in the room at the same time. We usually don't get that many. Decisions are made by consensus. And surprisingly, there are very few times when we aren't able to reach consensus. Most of the time, the decisions we're making are pretty uncontroversial. So a particular group is trying to promote an event they're having. And of course, we put that on a website and send that out to our membership by email, and we highlight different activities in a newsletter. So it's mostly what we're doing is mutual support. We're trying to support each other in these efforts. And so usually, that's not a controversial thing that people would question. Steve, can you give me a couple examples of programs, of activities or something, since you're a program director for Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. What are some programs that have been visible, had a fact, been particularly fun to do? Well, we've actually had a really good example today. There's a statewide campaign called Restore the Vote that's working to restore voting rights to ex-offenders. In the state of Wisconsin, people who are on probation or parole are denied the right to vote. And this is a very broad statewide coalition. ACLU Wisconsin, for example, is working on it. Many of our member groups are engaged in that. It was before a committee of the assembly, and yesterday the committee voted to pass that proposal to expand voting rights and to send that to a full assembly for a vote. And there was a product of a lot of work. Again, we play a supporting role, so I wouldn't say that we could claim the bulk of credit for that. I was many, many people who worked together on that. But the important thing was bringing people to that hearing, a committee hearing, from all over the state of Wisconsin. You know, family members of people, ex-offenders, and ex-offenders themselves, and people who work with ex-offenders to talk about the importance of restoring those voting rights. And we're happy to say that we've been successful. That coalition has been successful in getting that out of committee and getting that sent to the full assembly for vote. And of course they'll now continue that work to win that vote in the assembly and eventually to make that law. I suppose it's all the more important to help restore people's voting rights when we've criminalized so many aspects of American society. What before was a minor event that you wouldn't lose your voting rights for. Now you've smoked pot, and so therefore you would lose your right. That kind of thing does happen, right? Yeah, and that's, I think, one of the important ideas behind the network is that these issues are connected. So for example, the war on drugs is creating a huge increase in our prison population, and then that is having the effect of denying people voting rights. And so seeing how those things are connected, it encourages people to belong to an organization like Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice because they understand we don't see these issues in opposition or one is competing against the other or everyone should go work on this rather than that. But that they're all connected and we need to work on all of them and support each other in those struggles. So I think the connection you've made there's a really important one, and there are many connections like that that can be made between the issues we've worked on. Well, as your name says, you're a network for peace and justice, and let's mention over and over that your website is WNPJ.org. Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, WNPJ.org. And people can go on there and they can find out what you're doing. They can donate, become members, there's alerts about what's going on. What else should they look for to that site regularly? Well, we have an events calendar there, so member groups are able to post events, and it's a very impressive thing to see. I think a lot of the activities that people are doing to make the world a better place in their community or to change foreign policy of this country don't get sufficient attention in the mainstream media, and as a result, people who are only getting their news from the mainstream media that nobody is doing anything, and if you go to a website like WNPJ.org, what you're seeing is that there are hundreds and thousands of people in the state of Wisconsin who are taking their time to organize events and to educate the public and to advocate for positive social change. It's a very encouraging thing to see. I really think of our website as a place that people can go for hope and encouragement in a very difficult time. Are there other events that you can say looks like we had a really good effect we've really been able to turn the tide? There are a lot of different peace groups and justice groups scattered throughout the state. Your membership of 172 shows that that's the case. Getting them to work together is not an obvious thing, I would think. It's difficult, I think, to get people to work together if you don't have a concrete goal and a very clear program of action. I think when people have a shared project, that's usually the best way to get people together and to cooperate. I think one of our biggest successes was in 2006 when we helped local groups put initiatives on their local ballots to call for an end to the Iraq War, to call for immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. And we were successful in placing those initiatives on the ballot in 32 communities. I should say local activists were successful in that. We played a supporting role and we ended up winning in all but eight of those communities. And six of those communities have voted for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. It actually voted for George W. Bush in the previous election. So we were able to be at 2006, which is really a critical time in terms of shaping of American public opinion. The opinion was at that time shifting against the war for the state of Wisconsin to put forward this message that not just in Madison or not just in Milwaukee, but in many small towns around the state that are considered conservative places, people were saying that the war should end and the truth should come home. And that was a wonderful project to work on because it brought together people from all over the state and shared in a very concrete way to support each other. I want to comment a few things about your staff. You do have a handful of people who work with Wisconsin peace and justice. Judy Miner, your office coordinator. You're the program coordinator. Hildegard Dorr is your newsletter editor. Todd Dennis answered the phone. And he's been on my program before because he's in Iraq War veterans. So he's been on spirit in action before also. So you've got this assortment of people who work with Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. My question is, do they come in representing different issues or different factions, different points of view, like you can have the religious or the secular or maybe different areas of the state? How do you get representation within your staff or what brings a person like yourself, Steve, to work with the staff for Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice? Well, at the network, what we've tried to do in the past few years is to bring greater focus to our efforts. And so we've picked some major issues that we try to give additional staff time to. So we try to support all of the initiatives of our member groups, but we recognize there are certain issues that are important enough that even though we have limited resources and limited staff, that those issues deserve some additional attention. And there's basically four issues at this point. Of course, the war, both the war in Iraq and Afghanistan are supporting anti-war efforts. That's primarily my focus, and also Todd Dennis works on that. And then prison issues, the expansion of the prison system and the effect that that's having on communities. And Sarah Quinn is an intern who works on that. And then we also work on immigrant rights. We recognize that with the crackdown on immigrants and increased enforcement, which has not changed since the Obama administration has come in, that's another area that we work very hard on with the groups like Vosas de la Fuentera and with the Immigrant Workers Union and Worker Rights Center. And then the environment, and especially in anti-nuclear work. There's an effort now to change Wisconsin's laws to make it easier to build nuclear power plants in Wisconsin. And one of our co-chairs, Bill Christofferson, has identified that as a very serious issue that we need to put additional time on. So at our assembly, for each of these, we have a working group. So there's a staff person, and then there are volunteers who join together in a working group. And so those four areas are the ones we've identified as being the most worthy of additional staff time. You identified yourself with anti-war type work, but your program coordinator. And one of the things that's included in program coordinating, I understand, is the award ceremony that's coming up on October 3. Tell us about that program, the lifetime recognition that you're giving to two people who we're going to be talking to shortly. Yeah, we're having assembly on October 3, and it is to bring together as many representatives and member groups as possible. And also people in the general public, so it's open to the public to participate, to get together and assess where we're at, what the situation is today, where should we be putting our energy, and to work to bring together activists on different issues so that they can meet face-to-face. It's nice to use email, but I think it's also really important that we have that face-to-face contact. And then as part of that, we honor people who have either over a lifetime of commitment or a youth activist, perhaps, who have really done extraordinary work and supported Peace and Justice. And we think it's very important that those of us in the Peace and Justice community honor our own, because we understand that the mainstream media often is not paying sufficient attention to the work that these people are doing. So the assembly will start with a business meeting. We'll have panel discussions and workshops. And at the end of that, we'll have the ceremony that honors the different peacemaker winners who range in age, this year from age 80, down to age 13. Down to age 13, what are you saying that you have award winners in that area, too? Yeah, we have a Presented Youth Award. So that's, of course, the youth that are working for Peace and Justice. So, for example, Dartanian Lewis, who is a student at Blessed Savior Catholic School in Milwaukee. And he's been doing a lot of volunteering at Casa Maria Catholic Worker House, volunteering and helping homeless families, and those things like sales fair trade chocolate to raise money for people in Darfur. So he's an example of a young man who's very concerned about the world. And we want to honor that and respect that. And so this year, Dartanian, along with some other young people, is one of our youth winners. Well, could you tell me about your awardees for this October 3 event at Joe Elder and Esther Heffernan? How did you pick them? Have they been participants at Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice events? And there's a lot of peace and justice activists throughout Wisconsin. How do you pick these two out? Well, what we do is a very open process. So we taught the year before. Anybody who is a member of the organization or one of our member groups can submit nominations. And then we have a committee that reviews all the various nominations and chooses from the people nominated who the award winners will be. And I think this year, the name of the organization Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice is really apparent in the people that have been chosen. So Joe Elder, I associate it with peace. He's a Quaker, peace activist, and somebody who's been working for peace his whole life. Esther Heffernan is somebody who's been working to reform the criminal justice system. And I think we always make an effort in everything we do to have that combination of peace and justice. So can't simply be one or the other. And so these two winners, I think Joe and Esther together demonstrate that. You know, when I saw the notice of this award event, one of the things that caught my eye was that you had Esther, who is a Dominican nun, and Joe who's a Quaker. So you've got two religious people involved in this. I guess part of my question is out of your 172 organizations, how many of them are religious or non-religious or perhaps religiously affiliated, spiritually affiliated? And was that an intentional part of the selection process? I don't think it was an intentional part. I think we look at who is nominated and where are the recommendations coming from and how many people are identifying different people. But it is definitely a very strong part of our tradition. Many of the founding groups have come from a religious base. Our largest member group, Wisconsin Council of Churches, is obviously a religiously based organization. But we also draw many groups that are not. And so we try to be very non-denominational in our approach. And we all come to this with different motivations. Some people are motivated by religious belief and other people aren't. I've never found that to be a cause for conflict. I think we all have similar goals, whatever our motivations we can see. We have, I think, shared vision for the kind of world we like to live in. How does it break down, though, with your membership? How many of them are religiously or something affiliated? I mean, are there a lot of church piece groups? Is it all community groups? Is it professors throughout the state? What is the kind of distribution amongst your membership? We have individual members and then we have member groups. And the member groups, I would say, you know, a good third of those are probably peace groups of some sort. Many of them are local, small, local peace groups, so it might be five or six people in a small town who do a weekly peace vigil. And that might be their activity, or it might be the social justice committee of a small church that is a member group of ours. I don't actually have the statistics here about how many are religious, so I don't think I can answer that question. But it's definitely a mix of people, groups that come in with religious motivation and other groups that are not. If someone wanted to be there for the awards dinner, is that possible? How would they go about being at the October 3rd event? Oh, it's definitely open to the public. It's a working meeting for our member organizations to come to because we do have a business meeting part of it. I should also say that the theme this year is connecting the dots and we'll be doing a panel presentation with activists who have done that, who have taken one issue, activists who work in one issue and connected that to people in another issue to make a stronger coalition. Then we'll follow that with workshops for the different areas, the immigrant rights, prison issues, the environment, and anti-war. But it is definitely open to the public and the meeting will be at the Goodman Center in Madison on Saturday, October 3rd, starting at 10 a.m. We'll have a reception for the awarding of the Peacemaker Awards at 3.15 and then they'll be followed by a reception, which is open to the public at 4.30. And I think that reception means that you'll have food there, right? I think ice cream would get every activist in the state there. Well, I'll take that suggestion to our planning committee. It sounds good. I had one other question about your group. Networking for Peace and Justice, certainly a lot of people have tried to do it at one time or another. The place that I saw the announcement first for your event on October 3rd was via Wisconsin Action Alliance. What does their group do versus what your group does? Is there overlap or is there separate domains that you're covering? We're actually a member of Wisconsin Action Alliance, and I realize it is confusing because it seems like there's a proliferation of various networking groups. And I think that's just that a lot of people are now recognizing, as people in Wisconsin recognized back in '91, that when we were founded, that networking is a really powerful thing, if you can do it right. Wisconsin Action Alliance is mainly a web-based organization, and it's available to groups at no charge who want to do some networking and mainly be able to post events and see what other events other people are doing. They have an interesting feature on their website that allows member groups to vote on activities of different member groups and endorse. And then if they reach a certain level of support, then an email goes out to people who have signed up for these kind of alerts. And that's actually part of a really interesting project that's going on all over the country. So I now think that organization has actually set up a website for every state in the country. So they came to us several years ago and said we know you're doing good work and your network seems to be very successful, but we've done this in other states and we'd like to try it in Wisconsin, and we were very open to that and wanted to encourage them and work together with them. So it's not a competitive situation. We see it as the more opportunities people have to be involved, whether it's purely through a website or maybe there's more personal with us, I think, because we have a budget for paid staff, we can give people a little more personal attention. But you know, all those things, I think, are to the good and we encourage any additional efforts to network. We think it's a very powerful tool and we'd like to see more people using it. One of the questions that I had when I consider organizations like your own or Wisconsin Action Alliance, which are trying to help, I guess you'd say, liberal and groups network together, there certainly is a lot of overlap in terms of interest and motivation. But I think that people on the left or people on the liberal side are notorious for being independent minded. It seems to me, for instance, when you look at Congress, that it's not too hard to get the Republican bloc to vote together. You might have one or two defections, but when you get over to the Democrats, which spans a whole range of liberal, conservative, people are going in different directions. It's a little bit like herding cats. How much do you see that in the work that you're doing? Well, I think that's one of the themes of our assembly this year in connecting the dots. So the challenge is how do you get groups that are working on different issues to see the common threads between our different struggles and then to actually work together in a constructive way? A really great example of that. Renee Crawford, who works with ACLU in Wisconsin, who will be one of the panelists, speaking about this theme of connecting the dots, talked about her efforts in terms of restore the vote program to bring the right to vote back to ex-offenders. And then one of the groups that she had worked to bring on board in that coalition was a group that advocates for victims of domestic violence. And she said that when she tells people, you know, the endorsing organizations, many times people look at them and say, well, why is a group that's advocating for victims of domestic violence, also part of a coalition that's advocating for ex-offenders? And Renee was able to make the case to that group that this was a matter of social justice and that people are being marginalized by society in many ways. Maybe their voting rights are being denied or they're being denied employment, and that's not helpful even to the victims that we need to heal and to bring people back into society. And she built over a long period of time, built up a relationship with those groups, and that, you know, was able to make that case and to bring that group in. And so that's, I think, an example where with patients and really being willing to build the relationship, we can work together, but it's certainly not an easy thing. That's one of the reasons we're emphasizing this topic in the assembly. We want our member groups to come and learn how this is done effectively. Well, I wish you really well on that October 3rd conference. This is your annual conference. And again, you've been going since 1991. Have you got great plans for the future? Are there places you're going that we should know about and get ready to be part of to help support? Well, we've got a major initiative we're pushing on the anti-war side is a bill that would require the governor of Wisconsin to review any federal orders for deployment of the Wisconsin National Guard. You may be aware that earlier this year, 3,500 members of the Wisconsin National Guard were deployed to Iraq, and there was the largest guard deployment since World War II. And there's a growing national movement that's active in 20 states now that's calling on governors and state legislators to challenge that use of the National Guard. That because the war in Iraq is illegal, and for very specific legal reasons, that those federal orders that take our friends and our neighbors and people from our community who are in the guard and sending them to Iraq is actually a violation of the law. And that's the duty of the states and state legislators to stand up to that. And we have legislation in the Wisconsin Assembly, which was introduced by Representative Spencer Black, that would require the governor to render legal opinion on these federal deployments that are being made. And we're actually organizing a lobby here for next Tuesday, September 22nd, bringing people from around the state to talk to legislators about the importance of this bill. And we'll be doing that again in October, and after that, there should be hearings in the Assembly before the Veterans Affairs Committee, and we're hoping to be successful at those hearings and then get that bill passed through the Assembly and through the Senate. If we do that, Wisconsin will be the first state in the country to actually take a legal stand to change its laws to give this governor the power to review these federal orders for deployment. And I think that would be a very big step forward in terms of resisting this continuous use of our National Guard for illegitimate purposes. As we've said over and over, this is Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. And the idea that Wisconsin might be first in the nation is not a strange idea. Wisconsin has this, I think, elegant history of being progressive, of leading the nation, of being ones to step out and do something different. So I think you're well placed, aren't you? We are, and we have a friendly competition with Vermont because we work with peace groups in Vermont. Sometimes they originate ideas, and then we take them a little bit farther. So at this point, we're having a friendly competition with activists in Vermont to see which state will actually be the first to pass this bill. Well, I hope that we do it here in Wisconsin. And, you know, I'd even be happy if we tied with Vermont. Either way, it sounds like you're doing great work for the state of Wisconsin and for our nation. Thank you so much, Steve. I want to remind people that they can go to the website, WNPJ.org. That's Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.org. Go there, find the events, and October 3rd, you can take part in their annual conference, which includes the awards for Joe Elder and Esther Heffman. Thanks so much, Steve, for joining me for Spirit in Action. Thank you, Mark. That was Steve Burns, Program Director for the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, joining us today for Spirit in Action. I'm Mark Helpsmeet, your host for this Northern Spirit Radio Production. Our site is NorthernSpiritRadio.org. Please visit, listen to programs, visit guest links, and post a comment when you drop by. We love to hear from you. And now we'll turn to Esther Heffman, who is one of the two people to receive the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice Award. Esther Heffman is a Dominican nun, and she teaches sociology at Edgewood College with a special passion for understanding and bringing compassion and reform to our penal system. Esther is joining us by phone from Madison, Wisconsin. Esther, thanks so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. Well, I really appreciate having the opportunity to talk to you, Mark, and I'm looking forward to the interview. And I hope you're looking forward to your receipt of Lifetime Achievement Award by the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. Is this a crowning achievement to your life? Well, I tell you, I'm approaching it with very mixed feelings. I'm uncomfortable with the idea that, you know, I've made great contributions, so each time something like this comes around, I have a guilt feeling about not really having done that much. So I'm ambivalent, but I do appreciate their efforts, and they certainly have been making every effort to publicize it. And I was particularly honored to have Joe Elder as the co-awardee, because I've known Joe for a long time, and he is an extraordinary person. Well, it sounds like there's two of you that could fit that, Bill. You're a Dominican nun, and you're also a professor of sociology at Edgewood College. What do you do or focus on as a sociologist, and how many of the faculty at Edgewood College are religious folks like you? Very few, and you might say sociologists focus on structures. We're very interested in the social dynamics, political, economic, class, race. We have relatively few Cincinnati Dominicans at Edgewood now, though the college itself was formed by the Cincinnati Dominicans for initially the liberal arts education of women, but we had close relationships with the University of Wisconsin. Originally, it was a junior college. Our students went on to the university. Now it's four-year co-ed institution with graduate programs, so we've always tried to respond to the needs of the community. And we did that when we developed our criminal justice program. We have a major in criminal justice. I think your particular interest, Esther, is in prisons. Somewhere along the way, you got a personal glimpse of that, and it became an important issue for you to study and to act on in the world. What are your most recent actions related to reforming our penal system? Well, it's kind of interesting if when I look back, my first contacts, even in college, were issues of interracial justice. This was long before the dramatic civil rights movement, but it was just the beginning after the second world war, beginning to get affirmative action. That had originally been my area of concern, but then I was always interested in structures of power. When I began my doctoral work at Catholic University, I ended up looking at a woman's prison as primarily a structure of power. I was so in a way it was kind of like one step removed. But when I actually had the opportunity to interview every woman with a felony conviction in the D.C., D.C. is interesting because it's both a federal prison because D.C., everything you do, including J. walking, is a federal offense. If function is a jail, women's institutions take in women from an enormous number of backgrounds, but when I actually had personal contact with each woman interviewing them, also all of their records, and also the structures of the institution, including the staff and so forth, that whole world came alive to me. And of course with D.C., it still was heavily an issue of not only women, but of race. It was really a transformative experience because I began to see the world from a perspective that, you know, coming out of an ordinary middle class background, you don't see the world from the streets. You don't see the women who are surviving. And you also really don't see the prison system either. I mean, it's something other people are involved in. So that gave me, I think, a thrust to see how critical our prison system has been in the history of the United States and what it also has done, has made me go back historically and find out why we have the system we have, which is deeply, deeply involved in religious in theology, in slavery, in capitalism, in structures of power, and patriarchy. Now, that's a big picture, but you might say what I was doing, have been doing ever since that time, was trying to understand, untangle, make changes if possible in this structure, where now, I don't think people realize one out of every 100 adults are under the correctional supervision of the state. That doesn't mean that they're literally in prison, but they have the kind of control that they could always be in prison. So if you're thinking of a country that's the country of freedom and you think we have, under government control, one out of every 100 adults, you really have to think. And then if you realize that for young black men, it's one out of every seven. So that shaped my life and what I've been trying to do. When you refer to the fact that there's one out of the 100 or for African Americans, one out of seven young men who are in prison or on parole or on probation and one of those realms, how does that compare to the rest of the world? I mean, are there other countries who are similar to us, maybe even have more of their population in the penal system? No, no. You know how we always kind of kid about sports events where we're number one? Well, we are number one. And particularly when you're looking at what we call the, you know, modern industrialized nations, we are so skewed, enormously skewed in terms of who we have under the correctional control of the state. And when I say that is because we've got a whole set of invisibility. We've got the people who are in prison and they're invisible. You don't see them. But we have even more under probation, parole, supervision, who are also invisible, but they're with us in the community. That's why we can live with one out of every hundred because we literally don't see them. What are the rates of imprisonment in other countries like France, England, Australia, others? How do they compare to the U.S.? Much less. Now, in two ways. One is, in many cases, they don't have as broad a net, if you want to call it this way. We have a great tendency to criminalize behavior that we don't like so that it's like let's pass a law. So it's partly that you have shorter sentences. I mean, we went into three strikes and you're out where you can end up in California with a life sentence for three burglaries. In other words, we have systematically had a wider net had increasingly long sentences, a long supervision where if you mess up in any way, you go back to prison. And interestingly enough, the growth hasn't particularly been linked to offenses. When the push often to increase sentences will be some pretty dramatic crimes. Now, actually, the crime statistics have been dropping, but our prisons keep getting larger and larger. Much of it in terms of people returning to prison. In other words, they get out and there's nothing there and they're back in. All countries tend to imprison their poor and their minorities at a higher rate than whatever is the dominant group. So there we share something, but again, we tend to have higher imprisonment rates for minorities than most other institutions. You said Esther that you've been looking into the historical roots of this. What have you found important factors that make our way of dealing with it what it is? Well, what's kind of interesting in terms of history that links in the Great Britain is just when we were becoming a new country was the point at which in England they would talk about it as the era of the bloody code. So that in England, they had increasingly used the death penalty for felonies. That includes, of course, serious ones, obviously murder, highway robbery and so forth, but it also included all property theft. So that, I mean, they all often would say if you robbed your mistress of her linen handkerchief, you could be executed. And indeed in England, there were a high number of executions. So this was just at the time that in this country, we were just beginning to develop our system. There was a real movement against the bloody code, but the argument that developed on the continent and in England was that it would actually be a much more serious punishment to imprison people. And it was likened directly as a civil death. In other words, the use of slavery rather than death as a punishment for crime. So in this country with the development of a new system, but still out of the British, we were the people who really developed the penal system as a substitute for death. Now we retained capital punishment, but limited it pretty much to murder and so forth. And by the way, this is where the Quakers came in. Now, most of the movement was economic, but the Quakers also pushed for a particular kind of imprisonment, which was solitary confinement with the belief that it could indeed is a person reflected on their crimes. It could be the opportunity for spiritual transformation. So while they certainly were not the key people responsible for the penal system, the particular kind of penal system that's associated with Quakers, which was solitary confinement came about. At the same time, we had in the United States slavery, not penal slavery, but slavery based on race. And we had at the same time the development of, I guess you call it the Industrial Revolution. I'm moving into these first periods when we were developing industrial prisons. And we also, so that whole sense of human beings as commodities. So we had an interweaving in the United States. You know, when we're trying to figure out how we have this so heavily, is we had the mixture of shifting to the penal system, having the sense that the state can commit someone to, and the term that's used is civil death. In other words, you're no longer physically dead, but you're civilly dead. You have lost your rights. You also had a country that had slavery, as opposed to Europe, which had pretty much moved out of it, which could see human beings as commodities. And then you had a strong patriarchal structure, which, you know, linked into women's imprisonment. And all of these interboys, like having a whole set of dots, then to bring up the theological one, you have a strange situation, and this is a paradox. In England, you had an established church, but because you had an established church, you had a deep awareness of the difference between a ecclesiastical life in the state. So there was kind of an understanding that morality, that whole area, was a function of the church. When we came to the United States, many of our particularly in New England, you had, with your Presbyterians and so forth, the image that the state or the magistrate became the voice of God. So it's a paradox. Supposedly, we had a separation of church and state, but there is a sense in which what happened is we absorbed the church into the state, and the state became the sort of moral arbitrator. And I think what that means is that you put into law all kinds of things, which are moral issues. So if you're committing adultery, that's certainly an offensive thing to do to your partner and so on, and some morally repugnant thing to do. I don't even know that it's illegal in the United States, but is that an example of the kind of thing that might be put in the law here, but not have been put into laws where the church and state were more separate? Well, what it would be is rather that the state took over the defining of sin, the demand for repentance. In other words, you moved into the state areas that generally were distinguished. What does it mean on the practical level? What does that mean in terms of what laws are created or how they're punished? In the practical level, if you listen to a lot of judges and you talk to a lot of people, you have your moral dramas occurring in state court systems, and you will talk about retribution. You use religious language in the condemnation of people. It's sort of as if, because you don't in the sense have a church where in the sense confession is required, your state requires that one of the crucial things is, at the beginning of the development of this country, we had a whole range of theology about grace and the question of whether basically people were sinful, the whole dichotomy of saints and sinners. So one of the reasons we got separation of church and state was that it was an area where you didn't have agreement, and what that is meant is within our penal system in the sense we have built in some of these conflicting beliefs about the nature of people. I'm thinking that it also affects what things you criminalize. So what are some examples of things that might be in the criminal code in the U.S. but are not in other countries? Well, of course there's enormous globalization, but one interesting one that has wrecked an enormous amount of havoc in this country. Now, it's also international, but we were one of the countries that declared war on drugs. We earlier had prohibition. We had a war on alcohol. Now, the thing is, when we had the war on alcohol, you had a significantly large numbers of the population who simply didn't agree with it for who drinking alcohol was part of life in moderation. So it was conflicted all of the time, and you had such a large number of people violating it. Then finally, we abandoned, we have control, but we abandoned prohibition of alcohol as alcohol. We are now reliving this with drugs. The one that would link the question of race and the criminal law is the discrepancy between the punishment for having crack cocaine and having powder cocaine. You do know about that. I don't know specifically, but I am assuming that crack cocaine is punished more seriously. Very much more seriously, and it was built into the federal guidelines for sentencing. The thing is, crack cocaine is the cocaine of the poor. White cocaine is widely used, you know, by professionals and so forth. Well, everyone involved in the area knew this, and that has led to an enormous discrepancy in the racial imprisonment. Then finally, the sentencing commission that had the responsibility asked Congress to change the sentencing to make it equitable, not to make some distinction between powder cocaine and crack cocaine. And Congress deliberately refused the sentencing commission's recommendation. Well, what can we do about it? I mean, I think you just sat on a commission and you're trying to bring up some recommendations for improving the situation. What can we do so that we're not penalizing people for race? What can we do so that we're not spending all of our resources keeping people in prison? In just a couple minutes, can you tell me what you would change if you had the power? They appointed Esther Heffernon as a Supreme Commissioner here, and you get to change the laws and the prison system. What would you do and what would be effective? I think you have to operate on two levels, very much on two levels. I've been talking structure, but I think part of it is you have to move within yourself to the whole question of judgment of understanding, of empathy, much of the restorative justice movement. I'm thinking of Jerry Hancock in this of people being deeply aware of the fact of how much we share both our dark shadows and our goodness. We're moving here into the area of what is our nature and a really deep understanding and willingness to forgive, partly forgiving ourselves in some ways, but the awareness of the common humanity which transcends. I'm thinking of the quotation in St. James, where he's commenting on when people come to church, the wealthy person gets the front row, and do you find yourself sort of pushing the poor man out? I mean, scripture is filled with unawareness, the famous neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither men nor women. There you've got class. We have used shorthand class race and gender is our continual need to look inside of ourselves. So I'm starting with that. In some ways, they have the hardest. Then, if we are looking at policy, decriminalizing in a lot of areas, we don't automatically say, "Oh, let's make a law." And this can be in a whole range of areas. I mean, this is a delicate one, but right now, sex offenders have become the lepers. Anytime you hear someone talk, another person is a monster. So we need to really think about decriminalizing, think about rethinking what's the appropriate way to heal relationships, rather than retribution, imprisonment, think of restitution. So you have a whole set of things in the criminal justice system, in the laws, but you also have enormous inequities in income. When our task force was working, we were working on specific areas in which there may be discrimination, but we're acutely aware that you have enormous poverty that tends to be ignored. The gap, as we had increasing wealth, we had increasing dated communities, which are kind of a symbol of us in them linked with class. So that I would see the opportunity, if I were really just focusing on the penal system, I would see some decriminalization, shorter sentences, real effort at addressing addictions. That mean what were some of the causes that got people in? Generally, the people who are in prison have got out of school. You might say there is one dimension of our prison system, ironically, is the most expensive welfare system we've got. But if you look at that this way, it is the opportunity for education, job skills, substance abuse. I mean, there are the possibilities that there can be some rehabilitation, but as they're structured now, overcrowded using more and more punitive warehousing. Now, out of that, it's very hard to get anything that's not destructive of the human spirit, but you have very good people who work in the system to make it as livable as possible. I worked with a warden who I have tremendous respect for, who said my mission is to make it as little destructive as possible. It's certainly a worthy goal. I'm not sure we've got the full vision yet of where we want to go, but I hear that you've been putting a lot of years on it, and that's why the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice is going to be recognizing you and also Joe Elder on October 3 with Lifetime Achievement Award for your service. I wanted to ask you just a few more things, Esther, before we hang up. What I wanted to ask you was a little bit about your background. You're doing this. You're a Dominican nun. I don't think you were a Dominican nun when you were, say, 20 years old, but you're serving as a religious person trying to heal the world. Can you give me the short sketch of how you got from where you were to where you are in terms of religion? You know, it's sort of a typical teenager who's questioning everything, but when I was in college, and it was interesting because the University of Chicago is usually not seen as a place that breeds religiosity. But in a way, it was so challenging and asking so many fundamental questions that I think I came alive in terms of seeing a vision deeply involved in, say, the understanding of Catholicism, the traditions, the Eucharist, the whole picture. And, like many of my companions, I was active in what was called the Calva Club, it was the Newman Club. I became active. I became aware in a profound way that I had a calling, a vocation, a vocari to serve. And it's always been in the context of serving those around me, and particularly because even at that time, I was getting my masters in divisional social science and so forth. A deep awareness that you can do it with education, you can do it with direct service. So I didn't even know the Cincinnati Minnequins who are a Midwestern community. I grew up on the West Coast. I'm a Westerner. It has given me a deep family support. It's a community that had even had social justice. We had some of the first in the segregated south. We had high school deeply involved in the civil rights movement. So I've had support of the community. I finished my doctorate at Catholic U, and that's where I had the transformative experience of seeing the world through the eyes of the women who are surviving on the streets. And there was a war on drugs at that time. So I've been immersed, but also deeply aware of the kind of fundamental critique which scripture gives us on the deep humanity. And one of the things I think people don't realize is, I mean, do not only have the visit me in prison, but you have the profound reality that Christ had all the due process of his time. But he was indeed a threat to the state. He was a threat to the religious establishment up there. And he ultimately at the very last was really saying, "I am for all people." And I remember visiting one of our former students who was down in the Dane County jail, and she was distraught. And I said to her, "You realize there is no group that Christ is closer to than those who are in jail." It's an ambitious plan you've got for the whole penal system master, but it's got to be a little daunting to contemplate the amount of work that it will take to clean up this mess. What keeps you going? Well, you keep at it, but you know, if you have any sense of history, it's basically you have hope. Not that you're going to do anything dramatic, but it's a little bit here and a little bit there, and maybe it will make a difference. Well, I think Esther that you've put a lifetime into it already, and that's why the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice is recognizing you on October 3rd. I want to remind folks that you can find out about Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, and you can attend the ceremony where Esther Heffernan and Joe Elder will be receiving Lifetime Achievement Awards awarded by Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice on October 3rd. The website is wmpj.org. Thank you so much, Esther, for your lifetime of service. I know you've still got more to go, but I think you've done a great amount already, and thank you for joining us today for Spirit and Action. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Esther Heffernan and Steve Burns were guest today for Spirit and Action, and the other October 3rd recipient of WMPJ's Lifetime Service Award, Joe Elder, will join us next week with his engrossing stories of work for peace, including his quiet, non-governmental shuttle diplomacy in Asia on behalf of Quakers and the American Friends Service Committee. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit and Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will know this world alone. With every voice, with every song, we will know this world alone, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing.