The President Speaks: Death penalty

I arranged the time this evening to talk with you about the recent murders in various parts of our country. What I want to address is our reaction to these murders.

It is true these crimes are horrible. It is also true that those who committed the murders should be arrested, tried and convicted.

What disturbs me more than the murders is our assumption of guilt until innocence is proven and our lust to give the death penalty to the convicted individuals.

I have often wondered why Americans lust for revenge. It is true that we have usually imposed the death penalty. It is also true our domestic barbarism was balanced by a sense of justice in foreign policy. Following World War II we helped to rebuild Germany and Japan, not gloat on their ruin.

However in recent years America lost its balance. In the seventies we gave up on jail and prison as places to rehabilitate offenders. We have built more prisons. We refuse to give up the death penalty.

When the Twin Towers were destroyed we sought revenge on two countries. We were not content to even the score, but wanted to wreck havoc in those countries that do not have the money and knowledge we have to recover from attacks.

With the aid of Global Positioning Systems and a deceitful concern for children, we sought to socially destroy sex offenders after they served their sentences. Our eagerness for revenge does us no good. What it does is reveal our lack of confidence, good will and faith in the future.

What has traditionally set America apart from China, India, the Middle East and Europe was our faith in the future, our good will, our confidence. It was our Yankee Ingenuity combined with the exuberance of a new nation that made us separate from the old worlds and their ancient fears, hatreds and rivalries.

Unfortunately, we have aged more than our 250 years. We are filled with our own fears, hatreds, rivalries. We are a nation of 250 going on 1000.

Rather than rehabilitate our criminals, punish our enemies only to even the score and roll up our sleeves to find out why we have so many perverts, we have taken the easy road. Like bitter elderly who missed out on their youth, we as a nation wish the worst for others whenever things go badly.

This must end.

In the media there has been a lot of talk about healing. But the healing process, as important as it is to those who are lonely, isolated, betrayed and grieving, has not carried over to the nation’s politics.

We as a nation do not grieve for children without fathers. We are not grieving for all the young men in jail. We have not sought to heal ourselves from our betrayal by the federal government beginning in September of 2001. We have not recognized our lust to punish as an evil that needs to be remedied.

We need to be healed, though we do not want to make the effort to heal ourselves. Fortunately, those few committed to prohibiting the death penalty and ending revenge are some ot the most committed people in America.

With their help, I am trying to persuade Congress to pass a law forbidding the death penalty. It is important to outlaw the death penalty because most of the people who receive it are poor. They could not afford the representation they needed to protect themselves from so serious a sentence.

Another reason to eradicate the death penalty is because too many people who receive it are not guilty.

Without the death penalty, a lot of steam will be taken out of our eagerness for revenge. But that does not heal our ill will and it does not solve the problem of what to do with rapists and murderers.

Justice must be served. We must protect ourselves from the most dangerous and unapologetic criminals. We must also save ourselves from revenge and the feelings of powerlessness that make us seek revenge.

We must seek a just punishment. A just punishment is given in confidence with as much good will as possible. A just punishment is a punishment that seeks to punish and rehabilitate at the same time.

America needs to regain its confidence, to punish and rehabilitate at the same time. America needs to believe in justice once again, to believe in the future once again.

I am pushing for a new punishment to replace the death penalty. I expect my proposal to be laughed at. However, my proposal challenges America to see how seriously it wants real justice.

The proposal is life imprisonment in solitary confinement. That seems punishment enough, however life imprisonment in a traditional setting does not rehabilitate a criminal.

My proposal calls for a setting that will allow a criminal to have a new perspective on the world and himself. Each cell of the lifetime prisoner in solitary confinement will have a view of nature.

Sunshine will stream into the cell. The windows will be openable in order for the prisoner to hear birds and crickets, to smell scents from the garden. He will be allowed to be alone outside for three hours a day.

Psychologists claim that under such conditions a violent man will have the opportunity to come to terms with himself. He has no opportunity in a standard prison.

It is my hope that as these prisoners live out their life in a beautiful setting, they become filled with peace and beauty that they never had or that they squandered. I hope they ask God, the victim and the family of the victim to forgive them, for now the criminal knows all the peace and beauty he deprived the victim and family of the victim of.

He knows something else too. He knows how much he longs for people. He has this beautiful garden and peaceful cell to sit in, but nobody to talk with. He hears the music of the birds and crickets, but has nobody to dance with. He smell luxurious scents from the garden, but does not smell the scent of perfume and never will.

He might be tortured by his beautiful punishment and go mad. He might be content to live out his days listening to birds. He might not benefit at all from a punishment given in good will, but wish he was dead.

Some men receiving this sentence will eventually be found not guilty then released. Their pain will be immense because they know how much they have missed.

Fortunately they will be healthy. There will be no nightmares from prison. They will be able to start their life again, attempting to bring out and experience the beauty they’ve been overwhelmed by every day.

At the very least, they will realize they received as just a punishment as is possible with an unjust conviction.

There is a possibility to be healed with punishments like this. Such punishments indicate a faith in justice. They show that American ingenuity is returning, that we are recovering the maturity we had for such a short time after World War II.

I ask you my fellow Americans to become strong again. Purge yourself of your weakness and revenge. Show the world we are a nation of great women and great men.

Stowe Lake San Francisco

In a row on a log

Basking in the sun

Turtles show their shell to the world.

Friday, September 1

Dear Jim,

It´s 8:00 pm in the hot, smoky, dusty River City. It was 107°. In San Francisco it was 106°. I told dad I would rather be in Sacto than in S. F. when it´s that hot. Dad agreed. San Francisco is humid.

One good thing about the smoke is that it blocks the sun so I don´t have to worry much about sunburn.

I had a chiropractic appointment at 11:30. I didn´t want to stay home all morning so I went to the neighborhood park and read for an hour, then walked to her office.

I love going there. Every two months I go. I started going because I thought that since
I´m getting older, It would be a good idea to keep myself loose and to catch any problems at an early stage.

She´s good for me – a real old school character. She´s a few years older than I am so I hope she stays strong. She gets physical.

How are you? It´s September. You loved September and October. You used to go to the beach during Indian Summer and run, following the patterns of the water as it came to shore. I was afraid to take my shoes off at the beach because of the broken glass.

When I was in the 6th – 8th grade and you were in college, the city started to get dirty with broken bottles, pull tops, fast food packages, and dog shit.

The dog shit was incredible. Remember the time I stepped in some and you made me take my shoe off and put it in the trunk?

Our sisters were with us. It was a night in Indian Summer. We were at an ice cream parlor.

In the 80´s I was with some people on Irving Street. You remember all the shit – when a woman slipped and fell real hard. She was pissed off. I would be too.

Cities are cleaner today. Bottles are recycled. There hasn´t been pull tops for Lord knows how long. People put their hamburger wrappings in the garbage now. There isn´t a lot of dog shit on the street or in parks because people scoop their dog´s shit into a plastic bag, then put it in a garbage can.

What´s funny, and I have been saying this for twenty years, women don´t walk barefoot anymore. When we were young, women walked barefoot all the time, even with all the glass and dog shit.

Now there isn´t a lot of glass or poop, but only a few people walk barefoot. Being barefoot was a woman´s thing – their connection to the earth, their trust in the universe, their willingness to cut loose.

Maybe being barefoot makes them feel vulnerable in this age of terror. They are afraid of being raped or having their purse snatched. Being barefoot and carefree will make them more of a target.

I also think women don´t want to walk barefoot because the world is fast and furious. Women want the power that comes with wearing shoes, or at least to be taken seriously when they aren´t barefoot.

And last, the world has become so male in all the bad uses of the term, that women have become like the old time men, hard driving and afraid to be vulnerable.

If my feet weren´t deformed, I would walk barefoot all the time. I don´t want anyone to laugh at them or ask me about them.

When I went to a custom shoe guy for inserts 17 years ago, he told me that I have everything you do not want in a foot – real wide spread of toes, real narrow heal, high arch, high instep, and the index toe much longer than the big toe. Remember you used to laugh at my index toe protruding through the tip of my sock?

My chiropractor and I talk a lot. I made her laugh one day when I said, ¨I love my feet.¨

They have been through club feet and a major operation. If they had been normal, I would have been a little better in sports. I did so much with them – all my wanderings through Golden Gate Park and along the beach; my nine years as a gardener; all the boogieing; all the wandering in Sacramento; the time I walked along the railroad tracks from Chico to Marysville – that was a great trip.

In the last week I needed to be barefoot. Twice when I went to the park I took off my shoes and socks to walk on the dry lawn. My feet got dusty and I loved the touch of the dryness.

I would love to be barefoot all the time. It´s good for your soul.

Wednesday was the end of my 37th year in Sacto. I wish I could say Sacramento is a great city. But it isn´t. It has nice weather. The City has great views. But weather and vistas have nothing to do with whether a city has soul or whether the citizens trust each other.

I wish I could say I am happy and feel free here, but I can´t. I remember moving to the old part of town when I got here. I loved it because of the trees and the old houses, but I felt the people were phony. They thought they were cool like the people at 9th and Irving thought they were cool and the people on Carl Street thought they were cool and the people at City Lights thought they were cool.

Now the phony bohemians are priced out of Midtown and we have the Yuppies from the Bay Area. I still love the trees and old houses.

Well Jim, I´m trying to free myself and love the times I live in and love my fellow Americans who I do not like. I want you and mom to pray for me.

I´ve been reading Octavio Paz – The Labyrinth of Solitude – in Spanish. He wrote it in 1950. Did you read it?

It´s great. He talks about the inferiority complex Mexicans have. He said the macho attitude of Mexicans is the way Mexicans, male and female, deal with the pain they feel from being torn from their connection to nature, their Aztec past.

He says Mexicans have tremendous passion that is pent up from not being able to be the type of person and the type of nation they want to be. They have all these holidays where they get drunk, scream ¡Viva Mexico!, and knife each other. But those things don´t heal the ¨rupture¨ from nature or get them on the track to ¨transcending their isolation.¨

I´m trying to heal my rupture and transcend my isolation. I´ve already drank and yelled. I never had the ability to fight.

If Mexicans never heal themselves, they can still scream ¡Viva Mexico! and ¡Viva Maria!.

I better heal myself, because there´s nothing for me, as an American or a Catholic, to shout about.

Love,

Dave