Your commentary really added nothing to that post that had not already been said. Also "try to design a better system"? We are. Look up prison abolition or even criminal rehabilitation.
I don’t think you will enjoy my tumblr much
So I wanted to discuss a topic in social justice, because I genuinely believe it’s something we all need to be better at, myself included. Long post warning, sorry.
The above anon message was sent to me after I contributed to a Tumblr post here. The discussion was about the decision by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to support a controversial right-wing blogger’s right to speak. (If you prefer to get your news from sources, you can read NPR coverage from February 2017 here.) Lee Rowland, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU, said things like “What’s amazing about the First Amendment is it protects us, regardless of our viewpoints, regardless of the causes we hold dear.” (1)
As you can see from the first few comments on the Tumblr post, some people in the social justice community found this stance abhorrent. They explained that the ACLU is tainted by this decision, and that everyone who supports the ACLU (and all of the ACLU’s work) should feel bad. In the notes and discussion, people express their disappointment with the ACLU, adding that they have defended icky people in the past, as well. The message is clear: the ACLU has fucked up in their eyes by defending icky people and is now a Bad Organization, forever.
These people belong to the slash-and-burn school of social justice and online activism - where if an entity fucks up, that entity is tainted forever and can never be forgiven. Anything that the entity does for good is erased, forever, by That Time They Fucked Up. Under this school of thought, the massive amount of work that the ACLU does in defense of American civil rights - that important, life-saving, world-shaking work - is undermined because they have also defended the civil rights of icky people. This is the school of thought that recommends you discard all attachment to something if it has a problematic aspect. This line of thinking is interesting, and I believe it has good intentions somewhere, but I don’t subscribe to it.
My post addition, and those of others before me, pointed out that a nation’s civil rights must necessarily extend to everyone in the nation. My post addition specifically said that in order for a justice system to work, it must provide equal representation and protection for the accused. The entities that defend the accused are not evil for doing so, even if the accused is literally Satan. They are part of the necessary machinery for ensuring justice. “Everyone deserves equal representation,” was my point. “Try to design a better system [than equal representation].”
Anon, as you can see above, did not like me doing that. Fair enough.
They wrote “Also “try to design a better system”? We are. Look up prison abolition or even criminal rehabilitation.”
They meant to disarm me with these buzzwords, indicating that “they” - the Truest and Purest Social Justice Clerics - are more knowledgeable about criminals than conservative Elodie, who lives in a cave and supports rights for icky people.
Here’s the thing that I want to point out.
If you belong to the slash-and-burn school of social justice thought, in which you believe that one problematic thing (defending icky people) destroys the entity (ACLU) beyond redemption, so that the entity should no longer receive any good things (our support) ever, and anyone who questions that is an enemy (me), who must be punished (with anon complaints)…
YOU ARE NOT DESIGNING A BETTER SYSTEM,,
YOU ARE NOT A GOOD PERSON TO BE INVOLVED WITH CRIMINAL REHABILITATION.
YOU HAVE LITERALLY THE OPPOSITE MINDSET FOR THAT.
Because if you want to get involved with criminal rehabilitation, you stand a higher-than-ordinary chance of interacting with rightfully-convicted criminals who have done icky things - such as literal and genuine rapists.
And you are supposed to take those icky people, who have done incredibly problematic things, and you are supposed to direct them towards redemption, and give them good things, and assure them that they can still be a positive member of society who deserves support. And you have to believe in this.
Even if the criminals hate you, and are constantly lashing out in pain and fear and disgust for you, insulting you and abusing you and berating you. If you want to rehabilitate a criminal and abolish prisons, and build a society where equal representation is not needed because everything is PERFECT AND FAIR, here is what you have to do: if you want to take the people whose actions have placed them outside of society, and bring them back into society - you have to believe that One Bad Act does not define people. That people can learn from past mistakes. You have to stake your life and soul on the fact that people can make incredibly bad decisions, and hurt others irreversibly, and behave in incredibly icky ways - and that they can THEN do enough Good to erase that, or at least balance it.
If you want to rehabilitate criminals, you have to take people who fuck up and fuck up and fuck up, and say “Well, you still have plenty of value as a human being, and you can absolutely move past this.”
If you want to rehabilitate criminals, you have to offer them the reward: “If you stop fucking up, and put some positive things into society, then you will earn support. You will no longer be an icky person who fucks up. You will be a better person who will deserve every good thing. You have this capacity, and I will help you get there.”
If you want to rehabilitate criminals, then you will be tired sometimes, because some of the people are horrible criminals, and some of them really aren’t, and some are wrongfully accused people, but others are deeply awful people who never had a chance to be anything else. People who abused because they were abused, and people who killed their abuser (a cool motive, but still murder).
Believe me, criminal rehabilitation will be harder work than simply disliking someone on Tumblr. Things will be so complicated and so hard, and you will feel sympathy for the strangest people, in the most unexpected ways. You’ll be one of the people with dirty hands. And then people will accuse you of being icky because you defend rapists.
So I think even at the bottom of it, we still need equal representation. And we haven’t escaped that truth, despite the Clever Use of Buzzwords.
But I think that in the social justice community, we could stand to reflect upon this. Does the slash-and-burn principle of eliminating problematic things… actually work? Can we reconcile that ideology with beautiful liberal ideas like criminal rehabilitation and prison reform? Can people be icky, and still deserve every good thing? Or should icky people only have limited access to good things? How should we limit that access, and why?
Can we be redeemed?
Because I am a sinner, I have to believe we can.
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(1) It’s worth noting that this is an American cause. Hate speech is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America. There are no exclusions in the First Amendment for hate speech.
In the United Kingdom, hate speech is not protected speech, and it is defined more rigorously. Certain expressions of hate are indeed illegal and can be punished. The right-wing blogger’s speech and actions would not receive equal protection in the UK.
That is one of those awkward things about laws.
