Tag Archives: human rights

Beinvenidos al Hotel California

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This is the fifth post in a series about Cuba that starts here.

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After a few days in Havana we packed our bags and flew to Santiago de Cuba, a city on the other end of the island. The plane took off as soon as the last passenger stepped on board, half an hour before our scheduled departure. What if that person had been half an hour late? Would we have waited for him?

The plane was basic. The little signs you see in planes, the ones that say, “Fine for Tampering with Smoke Alarm” were in Russian. At least, I assumed it was Russian, and that they said the usual things. The seat tray in front of me was a piece of plywood held in place by chains and hooks that would have cost $5 at Ace Hardware. As we ascended, mist seeped into the cabin. No one else seemed alarmed so I tried to stay calm.

About an hour into the flight, the co-pilot came on to make an announcement. I could understand his Spanish perfectly; maybe he wasn’t Cuban. I was happy to be able to tell my group what was going on. “Ladies and gentlemen,” I translated, “We are hearing a strange noise somewhere in the aircraft and we can’t figure out what it is, so we’re going to turn around and go back to Havana.” Everyone laughed nervously, then fell silent as the plane banked steeply.

We sat on the ground in Havana for a while before taking off again. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the co-pilot said as we took off, “We apologize for the delay. The pilot is new and neither of us has flown this kind of plane before.” What “kind of plane” did he mean, I wondered? A Russian plane? A run-down plane? There was no mention of the funny noise. Presumably whatever had been rattling had been fixed, or determined to not be life threatening.

—

The first thing you notice about Santiago is that it is HOT. Hot as hell and humid. I don’t mind heat to a point, but if it’s too hot, this Minnesota-bred traveler’s brain and body become lethargic. We had flown almost 550 miles to experience “real” Cuban music that could not be heard in the capitol. I’m not a music connoisseur; most music sounds good to me unless it’s horribly out of key or country (which seem like the same thing to me), so I was skeptical.

We were transported to our “hotel”, which seemed to be some kind of abandoned camp compound with whitewashed, cement buildings spread out over several acres. I checked into my room and collapsed onto the bed, so out of it that I wondered if I was being drugged. Of course there was no air con, not even a fan, and no window screens, which allowed clouds of gnat-sized mosquitos into the room. The walls were bare and white, there was a bare bulb overhead and a double bed with a thin white sheet. The bathroom was the same as in Havana, with one threadbare towel and transparent toilet paper but instead of a flimsy toilet seat there was no toilet seat. Nice!

I turned on the black and white TV and there was only one channel; I believe Bonanza was on again. I groaned and attempted to wrap myself in the sheet like a giant burrito to keep the mosquitos at bay.

I woke up to knocking.

“Come to the pool!” a woman’s voice called.

Pool!? I detangled myself from the sheet and saw that my left arm, which had fallen out of the burrito, was covered with hundreds of tiny red welts. I flung the door open and there was one of my fellow travelers, an 80-something lady who had been subjected to a strip search at the airport upon our arrival and had taken it all in stride. She had a bottle of rum in one hand and a cigar in the other. Ten minutes later we were floating on a life preserver in the deserted but clean pool, sipping smoooth rum out of the bottle and smoking an even smoooother cigar. Cuba was heaven.

Cigars? Cigarettes?

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This is the fourth post in a series about Cuba that starts here.

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I was in Havana with the Marin Interfaith Task Force on the Americas, which has a tour coming up in April if you’re keen to visit the island.

Before the U.S. began its rapprochement with Cuba, Americans either had to go there illegally by flying from Canada or Mexico, or were required to have permission from the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC. And on these government-sanctioned trips, it wasn’t like you could just do whatever you wanted; the itinerary had to be vetted and approved and you couldn’t go off leash from your tour group. We carried OFAC letters on us at all times and, according to Ed, our Marin Task Force leader, OFAC probably had someone tailing us. And our Cuban guide was probably reporting back to his masters about … what? As I wrote in the first post, the Task Force was composed of a bunch of old hippies and me. But maybe the Task Force had been infiltrated by the CIA, and Ed was a plant?

I think in 10 years we will look back on this period and laugh about it. It was very cloak and dagger, and needlessly so.

—

I know, I know, you want me to stop going on about the politics and write about the rum and cigars and food and music, right?

Okay. First, the food. Everywhere we went, it was pretty much the same. Chicken, rice, and cabbage. Rice, chicken, and cabbage. Cabbage, chicken and rice. Obviously they had no problem providing themselves with these staples. According to Ed, the CIA had purposely introduced a swine plague that killed all the pigs on the island; that was why there was no pork. Why they couldn’t have grown something colorful–a little Swiss Chard or some carrots, I don’t know.

If you like sugar, you would love Cuba. Every drink is loaded with it, and we were offered desserts galore. The Cuba Libre was the standard drink, and it seemed to contain rum, mint leaves, and about a half a cup of sugar.

We toured a rum factory, which looked like something out of Victorian England. It appeared to have been built and hundred years before and never updated. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that—they certainly cranked out some smooth rum. We all bought bottles “to support the economy.”

We toured a cigar factory. The images here are from the Great Google but look similar to my tour, during which we weren’t allowed to take photos.

Cigar FactoryCigar Factory 2

The cigar factory is the single most vivid memory from the trip because the aroma was like nothing I’ve experienced before or since. Heavenly.

I bought a box “for a friend.” This is one of the reasons I love travel. I spend money on things I would never buy at home, and I can tell myself they’re gifts or that I’m supported a developing economy. And then I can enjoy them myself.

The cigar factory was also notable because it was a multistory, rickety, wood frame building. It reminded me of a barn inside, with bales of tobacco leaves piled around the perimeters and men standing at wooden tables in the center rolling the cigars (and cigarettes) by hand. One match and the whole place would have gone up like a roman candle. The workers were allowed a cigar allowance, we were told.

This seemed contrary to the anti-smoking campaign I’d heard about, in which Fidel was lauded for quitting and everyone was encouraged to follow the example of el Comandante Jefe.

—

When I returned to my hotel room and went to put my bottle of rum in the fridge, I found two eggs inside, wrapped in an embroidered handkerchief. Were they a gift, or had the maid forgotten her lunch? If they weren’t a gift, maybe the dancing lady hadn’t been a gift either. Maybe I should leave some money for it? I left a $10 bill with a note in my execrable written Spanish that this was for the beautiful dancing lady. I hoped the same maid came every day so there wouldn’t be an unfortunate misunderstanding.

¡Me Encanta Bailar!

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This is the third in a series of posts about Cuba which starts here.

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We checked into our hotel, the Habana Libre, a mid-century modern. It must have been splendid in its heyday. It wasn’t run down so much as dead. Deathly quiet, no people except the guy at the desk. The lights were dim. We made our ways to the elevator and when I got off at my floor it was so dark I had to grope my way along until my eyes adjusted to the dark. The room was spacious and clean if Spartan. It was as if slowly, over the years, the art, the phone, the clock alarm, the drinking glasses, every little comfort you expect in a hotel had been stripped away.

In the bathroom I had my introduction to some of the disconcerting results of the U.S. embargo. In particular, crude oil, with which plastic is made, was banned, and so the shower curtain was about as thick as a Walmart bag, and the toilet seat was like a large white Frisbee with a hole in the middle—so thin it couldn’t be well secured to the toilet so it slipped around underneath me. The toilet paper? Well let’s just say that if you toilet papered someone’s house with it, the first light rain would wash it away, it was so insubstantial. There was no soap or shampoo or washcloth but there was a towel—one—also so thin and threadbare you could hold it up to the light and even that dim light showed through it. I was the only one who got off at my floor; it seemed like they had distributed our group one or two people per floor.

There was a mini refrigerator with nothing in it and a black and white TV. I flipped it on and there seemed to be two channels: one with old American TV shows like Bonanza, the other featuring nonstop speeches by various politicians. This was when I discovered that all the hard work I had invested into studying Spanish would really pay off. Not! Cuban Spanish is so different, and so fast, that a lot of Spanish speakers from Mexico or Spain have a hard time understanding it.

Suddenly, there was a hard knock at the door. I jumped and yelled, “Who is it?” then, “Quien es?” The knocking continued so I went right up to the door to see if I could see anything through the peephole but whoever it was must have been standing to the side. I repeated, “¿Quién es?” then “Que quieres?” The knocking stopped, then a woman’s voice shouted something that sounded like “Pocky robbabab ocalaca macanaca!” She said it with great gusto. Was she being attacked? Should I open the door and let her in? There was no phone from which to call the desk, and even if I had had a cell phone twelve years ago there would have been no reception in Cuba. The pounding resumed, along with more incomprehensible Spanish and shouting. Eventually she must have given up and gone away.

—

The next day our group had a walking tour around the city. I had been to Mexico, Jamaica, and to El Salvador, so I wasn’t a complete newbie to the developing world or Latin America. I had also lived in some pretty poor neighborhoods in St. Paul. I was struck by how there were no homeless people here, no beggars, no children selling Chiclets. There was no graffiti or litter. Was that because people couldn’t buy anything, so they had nothing to throw on the ground? Or would they be thrown in prison if they did? Or was it all a front for tourists?

—

I returned to my room without incident and found this sitting on my bedside table.

Cuban Dancer

Who had left her—was she a peace offering? Anyway, she’s come with me on my travels ever since. When I get to wherever I am staying in Nairobi or Dubai or Dublin, I set her on my bedside table. Her head got lost somewhere along the way, which maybe symbolizes even more the carefree traveling spirit I endeavor to be.

All for None, None for All

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This is the second post in a series about Cuba that begins here.

I searched for my photos from Cuba and since I was well organized back in the day when we printed photos and put them in albums, I was able to find them quickly. I realized it’s been 12 years since I went to Cuba. That adds weight to my disclaimer that things have changed from what I’m going to describe. Mainly, everything has gone downhill.

—

I met my fellow travelers in the Miami airport. There were two dozen of them and I must have brought the average age down to about 60 when I showed up. They were pretty much as I expected; all the men had grey beards and ponytails and the women wore long tie-dyed skirts with Birkenstocks. They were a nice bunch of people, mostly couples but as usual on tours there were a few divorcees who put the tank in cantankerous. Ed was our leader. He had been to Cuba many, many times and he would be indispensable in interpreting what our guides said. Not because they spoke Spanish—because they had to speak Propaganda. Of course Ed had his own agenda, so much remained a mystery.

All the other people waiting for the flight to Havana were Cuban Americans, and they also fit a stereotype. Picture Desi Arnaz, then picture him about 30 pounds overweight, wearing an untucked-in Guayabera shirt, the flashiest designer sun glasses you’ve ever seen, dripping with gold chains, bracelets, rings, and a watch as big as Big Ben.

Ed explained to me in a low voice, “That’s how they get funds into the country for their relatives. They can’t smuggle dollars in, but their family can sell that jewelry on the black market.”

—

What struck me almost immediately upon arrival was that there was no advertising. There was propaganda galore—on wall murals, billboards, and ubiquitous images of Che and Fidel and other revolutionaries. But there were no billboards for products like laundry detergent or for stores or restaurants—because there were no stores or restaurants. There was almost nothing to buy, anywhere.

Che

But who needs stores when everything is provided by the state? “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” is the saying popularized by Karl Marx. Every Cuban got a house, medical care, electricity, food, an education—and cigars! The house might be about to collapse, the electricity might be out for hours a day, and the food might be basic (rice, chicken, and beans), but they could all depend on their monthly rations.

Everyone had a job, too. I had doubts about whether “ability” was factored in. I used a restaurant bathroom and was dismayed to find the toilet was broken. An elderly woman appeared with a bucket of water and dumped it in. Was that the best job they could come up for her based on her ability? No, Ed explained. Aside from professions like physicians, everyone was just assigned a job that needed doing. Or a job that didn’t need doing. These “make-work” jobs were in evidence everywhere. We were told to get in a van so we could be driven 25 feet from Point A to Point B at the airport. There were people sweeping clean sidewalks and guards guarding empty buildings. All of them—doctor, driver, toilet flusher—earned about the same per month.

There was one government-sanctioned store called a dollar store. American dollars are the currency in Cuba, and I mean cash. There were no ATMs, no credit cards or checks accepted anywhere, even at the hotel.

What was for sale in the dollar store? Nothing touristy, and nothing for a dollar. Everything was expensive. The store was tiny but packed in everything from clothing to washing machines. It reminded me of an old timey Woolworths, with no American goods, of course. There was an appliance brand called Vince which I assumed was Spanish or Italian. Trade with Cuba was in defiance of the U.S. Government, Ed said later. Spain was also financing renovation of the historic waterfront, the Malecon, on and off—the pauses due to bullying threats from the U.S.

Malecon

¡Cuba, si!

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There’s a lot of interest in travel to Cuba now. That is, travel by Americans, because most everyone else in the world has been going all along.

If you were to tell me, “I can only afford one trip this year. Where should I go?” my answer would be, “¡Cuba, si!”

Why? Because it’s the most different place you can go and not worry (too much) about being thrown in prison for 10 years.

I don’t know for sure, but I think most Americans imagine Cuba is a poorer version of Mexico, with better music and more baseball. Cuba is a lot poorer than Mexico, and there is great music and an obsession with baseball, but it’s more like Russia or China than the rest of Latin America.

Think about it: It’s a socialist country. If you harbor romantic ideas about communism or socialism, go to Cuba.

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I went to Cuba about 10 years ago. I had been writing papers about the Cuban Missile Crisis for my master’s program, and my friend Bette was married to a Cuban guy named Lumino. Lumino was only allowed to visit Cuba, where his children and grandchildren lived, every two years. “Each time we go,” Bette told me, “It’s more desperate than the last visit.” She gave me a book titled Cuba: Neither Heaven nor Hell. I was intrigued.

So one cold Minnesota day when I had nothing better to do I Googled “tours to Cuba” and up popped the Marin Interfaith Task Force on the Americas. Within a couple hours I was signed up to go on a legal trip to Cuba.

I love it when trips come together like this, spontaneously and easily.

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The Taskforce is basically a bunch of old hippies who live in the richest county in America (I don’t know how that works). They’ve been agitating against U.S. meddling in Latin America for decades. One of their strategies is organizing mission trips—not in the religious sense but to learn about situations on the ground first hand, to show solidarity, and to introduce new people to the cause.

There’s also the little fact that, in order for Americans to visit Cuba back then, they had to be on some sort of official mission. We were supposedly humanitarians on a medical mission to deliver medical supplies. While Cuba has one of the best public health systems in the world, they were so financially strapped due to the U.S.’s strangulating policies that they lacked basic things like soap and bandages. I write in the past tense because this is changing. But it will take a while to make up for decades of deprivation.

—

I want to note here that the Taskforce has a trip to Cuba coming up in April. The theme is “Environmental Justice in Cuba: A Study of Cuba’s Environmental and Social Policies and Practice.”

Anyone can join them; as their flyer says, “All are welcome to join this delegation! Professors, Students, Researchers, Activists!” They’ll tour Havana and the western provinces over 10 days and the cost is about $2,700, which includes everything except maybe your flight to Miami from wherever you live.

If you think that sounds expensive, I cannot emphasize enough how valuable it is that the Taskforce secures your travel visa for you and works with a tour company that knows the ins and outs of making arrangements in a country where everything is a mystery to outsiders. Plus, you would be covered by Cuban health insurance while you’re there! Ideally you don’t want to get sick or injured at all, but how cool would it be to experience the Cuban health system first hand, especially since I delivered a case of bandages to them 10 year ago? You’d have dinner party invitations for years based on that story alone.

I used student loan money to pay for my Cuba trip. I know, I know that’s a big no-no. You’re only supposed to use student loan money for tuition and education-related expenses. I would argue that actually going there was a much better education than reading books and articles and writing papers about Cuba. I’ll write about it in my next few posts.

UN-Doing the War on Drugs

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I ended my last post by saying I would write about a road trip I am contemplating, from St. Paul to New Orleans.  I don’t know enough to write about it yet, so for now I will revert to one of this blog’s main topics, addiction—and all the consequences of addiction and trying to stop it.

I’m very excited that the United Nations will hold a review of the whole drug control system in April in New York.  It’s called the Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on the World Drug Problem, or the horrible acronym UNGASS. I’d like to thank the Open Societies Foundation (OSF) for its reporting on this.  OSF promotes research documenting the heavy costs of the war on drugs and shares success stories from countries that have implemented smart policies.  I’ve plagiarized their recent blog posts quite heavily here.

—

The last time the UN had a special session on drugs, in 1998, the focus was “the total elimination of drugs from the world.”  Ha!  I wonder if there were any actual addicts or former drug dealers involved in coming up with that totally unrealistic goal.

Because it didn’t go well.  The war on drugs has led to public health crises, mass incarceration, corruption, and black market–fueled violence.  Governments—especially those in Latin America that have to deal with the fallout of bad drug policies—have pushed for this UNGASS.

Citizens are fed up too.  A few years ago, a coalition of organizations and individuals in Uruguay pushed until the country voted to become the first country in the world to establish a legal, government-controlled marijuana market.  The main objective of the law was to eliminate narcotrafficking.  But they also have a positive goal, to make the new marijuana production chain beneficial for poor segments of society and a sustainable business for small producers with limited resources.

For the first time, there is significant dissent at the local, national, and international levels.

UNGASS is an opportunity to put an end to the horrors of the drug war and instead prioritize health, human rights, and safety.

—

I didn’t even know that there was an International Narcotics Control Board, did you?  That sounds creepy.  And it acts like a bully, apparently.

For instance, in the 90s, Switzerland had a major drug problem.  There were open-air drug scenes and one of the highest rates of HIV in Western Europe.  The government pioneered services such as heroin prescriptions, supervised consumption rooms, and community-based treatment.  The Swiss people approved this policy through a series of referenda.

What happened?  The number of new heroin users declined from 850 in 1990 to 150 in 2002; drug-related deaths declined by more than 50 percent; new HIV infections dropped 87 percent, and there was a 90 percent reduction of property crime committed by people who use drugs.

But the UN’s Control Board accused the Swiss of “aiding and abetting the commission of crimes involving illegal drug possession and use.”

On the other hand, when Bulgaria introduced a law that made possession of tiny amounts of drugs punishable with mandatory incarceration for as long as 15 years, the Control Board praised their “political commitment and the will to deal with drug abuse.”  I’ve never been to Bulgaria, but life in a Bulgarian prison sounds horrifying.

OSF is publishing a series of reports in advance of UNGASS, including research into drug courts and their unintended consequences, and an examination of how the drug war affects girls and women uniquely.  You can sign up for their updates here.  Want to get more involved or have a say?  Check out this cool website, Stop the Harm.

So there!  After my recent buzzkill series of posts, I’m happy to share with you some good news and some easy ways to contribute to fixing this world’s drug problem—for real this time.

Au Mal Pain

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As usual, the prison news includes the good, the bad, and the disgusting.

The good: If I didn’t work in fundraising I might not have caught this item.  The California Endowment has announced it will divest its assets from companies that run private prisons, jails, detention centers, and correctional facilities.  This is fantastic!  The California Endowment is a foundation with $3,668,459,217 in assets.  That’s real money, and maybe it will start a trend.  I look at foundation tax returns almost every day, so I see where they invest their money.  It’s disgusting to see a foundation with a portion of its assets invested in a weapons manufacturer, for instance, and making grants for international poverty programs.  In part, it’s all the small arms the U.S. peddles to warlords abroad that destabilize developing countries and keep them impoverished.  That’s an extreme example but I bet it’s not that uncommon.  If you have retirement investments, you too may own part of Alliant Techsystems or Prison Corporation of America, and you are probably earning fantastic rates of return.

The not-so-good news, also in California, is a report that found abuse, racism, and cover ups a physically isolated prison about 90 miles northwest of Reno.  The town in which the prison is located, Susanville, has fewer than 16,000 people, and the two correctional facilities are its largest employers.  “Employees form tight-knit social groups known as “cars” that can foster what the report terms “a code of silence” that makes it difficult to report wrongdoing.”  They are accused of abusing physically-disabled and minority prisoners, inciting attacks against sex offenders, and conspiring to impede the investigation.   The prison’s nearly 3,500 inmates won’t report abuse because they fear the nearly 1,000 employees will find out and retaliate.  If this is true in this case, why wouldn’t it be true in Moose Lake, where Vince was incarcerated?  Moose Lake has a population of only about 2,700 and, as you might guess from its name, it’s in the sticks.

Then there are two items that would be ridiculous if they weren’t true.

First, rapper Nicki Minaj did a December 10 interview with Billboard Magazine in which she spoke out against mass incarceration, lengthy drug sentences, and the racial bias in sentencing: “What it has become is not a war on drugs.  It has become slavery.  When I see how many people are in jail, I feel like, ‘Wait a minute. Our government is aware of these statistics and thinks it’s OK?’ The sentences are inhumane.”

Earlier this year, she had said about Barak Obama’s prison clemency program, “I thought it was so important when he went to prisons and spoke to people who got 20 and 30 and 40 and 50 years for drugs. There are women who are raped, people who are killed and [offenders] don’t even serve 20 years.”

I guess you could call it a case of bad timing, then when Minaj’s brother was arrested December 3 for raping a 12-year-old girl.  She posted his $100,000 bail.  Blood is thicker than principles, I guess, and I’m not being sarcastic.  As his sister, she probably believes there’s a good explanation.

Last, in prison food news, the New York Times reports that the state’s prisons have announced they will stop serving Disciplinary Loaf—also known as NutriLoaf—to prisoners in solitary confinement.  It was served with a side of cabbage.

God, sometimes I wonder if you think I make this stuff up—that’s why I provide links.

This menu change is part of a slew of reforms to solitary confinement practices.  It was brought about as the result of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, whose director said, “Food is very important to prisoners in a deprived and harsh environment; it is one of the very few things they have to look forward to.”

I’ve pasted the recipe below in case you want to serve it to your family over the holidays.

Recipe for Nutraloaf

Makes 50 loaves.

Ingredients

5 pounds whole wheat flour

20 pounds all purpose flour

1.5 gallons milk, 1 percent

8 ounces fast active dry yeast

4 pounds sugar

2 ounces salt

2.5 pounds powdered milk, nonfat

2 pounds margarine

5 pounds shredded potatoes (with skin)

2 pounds shredded carrots

 

Preparation

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Heat milk to 105 degrees, then add sugar, salt and yeast. Let stand for 5 minutes.
  3. Add both flours and dry milk, then mix.
  4. Add margarine, potatoes and carrots. Mix for 10 minutes.
  5. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough rise.
  6. Grease and flour loaf pans and add dough.
  7. Bake loaves for 40 to 45 minutes.

 

Have a Little Kidney with that Turkey

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Happy Thanksgiving, to those of you in the U.S.  I’ve been kind of mired in negativity lately.  Here’s a little story that jolted me back into an appreciation of how good I’ve got it.

A woman approached Vince on the train platform to ask if he would sign a petition.  For those of you who started reading this blog in the last month or so, Vince is my son who was released from prison a few months ago and who is living with me.  He blogs here.

Anyway, on his way home from work, this woman approached and asked if he knew about … wait for it … organ harvesting in China.

Organ Harvesting

I work at a place called the Center for Victims of Torture and had a son in prison.  I thought I had heard everything.

Apparently, back in the 90s, the Chinese government gave the stamp of approval to a Buddhism-derived religion called Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa), which promotes truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.  I guess the government approved of it because it represented traditional Chinese ways, including meditation.

Falun Gong became wildly popular, and soon people were meditating in public parks by the thousands.  The government saw this as a threat and began to crack down.  Adherents are now routinely thrown into labor camps and tortured.  According to the brochure, captive Falun Gong practitioners are blood-typed and used as a large, live organ donor bank, killed on demand for “transplant tourists”—people who travel from other countries and pay for an organ transplant.  Do they know that someone will be killed to save their lives?  How can they not?  Again, according to this brochure, the wait for a kidney in the U.S. is five years.  In China, it’s 15 days.  Well that is slightly suspicious, don’t you think?

So why isn’t the west up in arms about this, like they are about the Palestinians or the Syrians?  Maybe it’s because China doesn’t have freedom of the press?  We know about the plight of the Palestinians because, ironically, Israel has a free press.  We know about the horrors Syrians have endured because they’ve managed to escape to other countries where reporters can talk to them and we see them in our Facebook feeds and on Yahoo News every day.

I don’t know who this young woman was who approached Vince on the train platform, but he thought she was Chinese.  So apparently Chinese in the U.S. are getting organized.  The brochure and their website are pretty basic.  If the Chinese can hack into the CIA’s websites, why haven’t they taken down the Falun Gong one?  I am very skeptical on a lot of issues, but this woman cared enough to stand on a train platform on a very cold Minnesota day and approach strangers with brochures.  If it’s not true, why would there be an organized effort against it?

I’m sorry if I ruined your appetite for turkey and mashed potatoes.  This story makes me feel grateful to not be in a gulag waiting to be murdered so my organs can be sold to wealthy transplant tourists.  No, wait…that’s kind of extreme.  I’m grateful that I can write about this, share the story, spread the word, and maybe contribute in some way to ending it.  Here’s a petition you can sign and share with others if you want.  Thank you.

Jew Be a Verb

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ANNE

A story line throughout the third season of Orange is the New Black is the character Cindy’s conversion to Judaism.

The corporation that runs the prison is cutting costs by purchasing brown, lumpy slop in giant bags that they pass off as food. One prisoner figures out that the frozen kosher meals are pretty good, and soon a group of prisoners are claiming to be Jewesses in order to eat kosher.

When the prison notices the uptick in kosher requests, it sends in a rabbi to suss out who is a genuine Jew. Cindy, who is Black, begins to read up on Judaism. At first she just wants to pass so she can keep eating kosher. But then something grabs her, and as she studies she becomes serious about converting to Judaism, and well, this is one of the few happy endings in the series. It wouldn’t be a happy ending to born again Christians, and we Jews aren’t in to converting people, but I am moved when anyone finds meaning.

I heard in this scene many of the same things that led me to Judaism. Like Cindy, I was raised in a faith in which pretty much Everything was A Sin, and fear and guilt ruled the day. You didn’t ask questions, you did what you were told by the men who ran the show, some of whom were molesting your friends. If you sinned, you went to this same man to ask forgiveness and it was granted by him and after I mumbled three Hail Marys.

—

I think there’s a perception that Judasim is just like Christianity, except without Jesus. It’s not.

In liberal Judaism, which includes the vast majority of Jews in the world, there is no hell and little emphasis on sin. The idea is to do the right thing today, because it’s the right thing—not to avoid hell. If you screw up, it’s your responsibility to make amends to whoever you have hurt and to make your peace with God, if you even believe in god, because a lot of Jews are atheists. Confused? Well in Judaism it’s your responsibility to study, ask questions, and wrestle with all the big issues to figure out what makes sense for you. No one tells you what to think or do. Rabbis, who include women and gays and lesbians, are teachers and have no authority to forgive you.

Judaism doesn’t prosthelytize. We don’t care if you agree with us or not; we don’t care if you are a Christian or a Buddhist or a pagan. Just don’t try to convert us, thanks.

Instead of using the word charity, we talk about justice. It’s not an option, and it’s not about writing a check. It’s about doing, fighting, and pursuing justice. These principles are one reason why I’ve been able to look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from all sides.

Of course there are plenty of Lutherans and Catholics and pagans and agnostics who are also motivated by social justice.

There’s more, but like Cindy, the main thing that attracted me to Judasim was an inexplicably strong feeling of recognition. Like Cindy said, “I feel like I found my people.”

After I had studied for several years with a Rabbi and a group of fellow seekers and yes, learned elemental Hebrew, I converted—which is a five-minute ceremony. My mother attended the Friday night service in which this took place. Just before we left for synagogue, she said, “I guess it makes sense, you converting to Judaism, since your father’s family was Jewish.”

What!? She had known I was studying all along. She didn’t have any details, and since my dad died 47 years ago and we’re not close to his family, and I have no time or patience for family tree research, it will just remain a question mark.

When I told a rabbi this story once, she said that she hears stories like this often, and that there is a theory that all the Jewish souls lost in the Holocaust have sought refuge in the people who are converting, whether they’re in prison (Cindy) or are unwed teenage moms living in subsidized housing (me, nearly 40 years ago).

Nodrinkalotine

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ANNE

There seems to be all sorts of momentum to reform drug sentencing, to reduce mass incarceration, and to make it easier for ex-offenders to make it on the outside.

There was a full-page article in my favorite magazine, The Week, entitled “Opening the prison door: A new, bi-partisan movement is challenging the notion that jailing millions of Americans makes the U.S. safer.”  You have to be logged in to see it, otherwise I’d share it.  It cites the stats: taxpayers spend $80 billion a year to keep 2.4 million prisoners locked up.  It examines what’s going on in various states, including the reddest of red states, Texas. I never thought I would admiringly quote Texas Governor Rick Perry, but he said, “The idea that we lock people up, throw them away forever, never give them a second chance at redemption, isn’t what America is about.”

Current affairs geek that I am, I enjoy watching 60 Minutes on Sunday evenings.  I hate it when it is delayed for some stupid sporting event, like football.  ANYway, a few weeks ago they did a story on TED Talks, and one of the TED talkers they featured was Bryan Stevenson, a public-interest lawyer and the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, which is challenging racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune is full of related articles.  One is about a couple of drug reform bills that failed to pass.  Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman is quoted: “Those people who possess large amounts [of drugs] for sale suffer from the disease of greed, and the answer to their problems isn’t treatment, but the big house.” The big house? Is he living in a Jimmy Cagney movie or what? Regardless, most people in prison on drugs charges, including Vince, were busted with small amounts of drugs.  Sigh.

There an article about how the DOC has succeeded in banning journalists from taking photos or video inside prisons.  To me, this sounds very much like the DOC has something to hide, and also like a slippery slope toward becoming more like North Korea or Iran.  I mean, freedom of the press is a pretty fundamental part of democracy, and nowadays visuals are so much more vital to reporting than ever.

There’s an editorial, “Restore voting rights to former felons.”  This is a hot button issue for me.  Because Vince was convicted of his first felony shortly after he turned 18, he wasn’t allowed to vote until he’d cleared his record–when he was 30.  It so happened that this was the year Barak Obama was elected, and Vince was jubilant.  “My team won!” he exclaimed.  I was so happy for him.  Now he’ll start from square one.

At work, I see all sorts of funding opportunities for studies of addiction. These are just two that I saw in the same day: “Second Chance Act Strengthening Families and Children of Incarcerated Parents” from the Department of Justice, and “Human Studies to Evaluate Promising Medications to Treat Alcohol Use Disorder” from the National Institutes of Health.

So there really does seem to be a movement to end mass incarceration, and there is promising research being conducted to get at the root causes of addiction. Someday maybe, when you take your 10-year-old kid in for his annual exam, the doctor will run some routine genetic tests. “Mr. and Ms. Jones, I’m afraid your son has inherited your family’s gene for addiction. The good news is, we can tweak is DNA, or put him on a course of Nodrinkalotine. Let’s discuss the pros and cons of each….”