Shades of Gray

Last week, I attended the keynote speech at the annual conference for the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. Howard Zinn answered a series of questions asked by the moderator, Dave Zirin, an activist and author in his own right. It was an evening of laughter and tears, hope and discouraging truths. It was an evening I spent alternatively wishing it would end so I could escape and cry and leaning over the balcony ledge in front of me absorbed in Zinn and Zirin's conversation. I walked away sad and a bit muddled. And I haven't been able to stop thinking about the shades of gray that obscure everything I thought I knew about my world.

Marvin Reeves was at the conference. He spent 21 years in prison on Death Row after being wrongfully convicted of murder. He, along with Ronnie Kitchen, was exonerated when the State's Attorneys office couldn't meet its burden of proof in presenting the case after a judge granted both men new trials. The men were tortured into a confession by Jon Burge, a Chicago police commander fired from the department in 1993 for using torture to force confessions from prisoners.  That it took sixteen years for Reeves's and Kitchen's case  to make its way through the legal system after Burge's dismissal is a travesty - a travesty that exposes our flawed criminal justice system for what is: a system designed to maintain the power of the privileged. That it even happened in the first place exposes it as a system that sustains white supremacy and perpetuates the pervasive inequalities in a society that profits from putting disadvantaged men and women behind bars.

I sat in that balcony and listened to Marvin Reeves tell his story. I listened to him thank the campaign for assisting his release. He thanked all us, complete strangers, for not giving up. For fighting for him. He shook with emotion, and watching him, never have I felt smaller or more ineffective. See, I didn't write letters or march in a protest for Mr. Reeves. To be honest, I didn't even know he existed before last week. I was only at the keynote to see Howard Zinn speak. While Marvin Reeves was in prison being tortured by terrorists in uniform, I have been uncomfortably silent. And confused. I have been meandering in the shades of gray.

Being a white middle-class female, I've never had to fear the police. I would even venture so far as to say, as a whole, they've protected me well. From what or from whom is a question I never spent much time asking. When I was young and one of my family members was victimized, for weeks the police held a stake-out in our apartment. They camped out on the couch, ate sunflower seeds, maybe even played games with me on their breaks. I slept better knowing they were there keeping an eye on the neighborhood, knowing the attacker wouldn't come back for me this time. I trusted them. I even dated a police officer for several years (although ultimately, in the end, his behavior kept me far from safe). And I have friends who were police officers. Good, honest people devoted to maintaining the peace, to serving the public. Yet again, that the definition of peace and the public means something different for me as a middle-class white woman is not a distinction I have ever been too willing to explore in this context. Until recently, it only made me twitchy and vague, and I abhor both of those sensations. Until recently, when the dissonance took up residence on my walkway, I'd nudge it aside or gently step over it. It was easier that way. It was easier for me. But it didn't help the Marvin Reeves and Ronnie Kitchens and hundreds of other Death Row inmates whose lives are wasting away behind bars.


Right. Wrong. Innocent. Guilty. Justice. Jury. What do these words mean? These crumbling and deteriorating words?

Marvin Reeves reinforced for me last week that I know a lot about very little. That I've lived very little. But, wading in the muck can be cleansing in its own paradoxical way. It can tear off the bandages of ignorance and birthright so the truth, if ever visible, might someday cauterize. In the meantime, we drift through the shades of gray. They might continue to obscure, but perhaps they might also emancipate.