The Journal of the Baptist Peacemaker October-December 2016 - 18
summer conFerence
What a Prison Tour Can Teach You
A Peace Camp Sermon
by Becca Donley
A
t a young age it is put into our minds that we can be
whoever we want and do whatever we want. We dream
about being engineers, presidents, doctors and musicians. We
hope one day we can be what we dream. I bet no one dreamt
of going to prison.
No one dreamt of living under the veil of racism that clouds
judgment and forces assumptions. No one dreamt of going to
school one day, then being dragged out in chains the next. No
one dreamed of what reality might look like.
On Tuesday afternoon, this week, I took a tour at Eastern
State Penitentiary. From the outside it looks like a castle, with big
towers and walls 30 feet high and 10 feet deep. But the second I
entered the prison, chills went racing down my spine. I looked
up at the tall, arched ceiling, which almost reminded me of a
church, and thought, "How could anyone find this place sacred?"
I couldn't get over a certain feeling. I didn't know what that
feeling was until later. It was grief. I had been overcome with waves
of sadness rippling through my body, like a hand had reached into
my chest and squeezed my heart a little. It pained me to think
about how many people had gone into this dark and gloomy place,
locked up in a small cell with a door half their size.
I almost couldn't continue. I felt scared. I think the design
was meant to inflict fear. To scare people enough to get them
to not do it again. Fear was the way to get through to people, or
so they thought.
We walked past torture chambers and the old hospital ward,
all haunting in their appearance and the tragic energy pushing
towards you from the walls. Outside they listed statistics in a
graph. It showed that we are the leading nation in the world in
the number of incarcerated people. By a lot.
Between 1970 and 2010, the population of white prisoners
went down, the percentage of black prisoners stayed the same,
and the Latinx population went from 3 percent to 21 percent.
Plus, on top of all that there was a 600 percent increase in
prisoners within just 40 years. 600 percent.
That makes me feel helpless. Because I feel like there is
nothing I can do. Then my privilege poked its white head into
my thoughts. And I felt guilty. By being white, I am less likely
to get caught up in the system. And that is wrong. It makes me
feel like I should have known it sooner.
So often, kids don't know the truth because adults are trying
to protect us and shield us from the harsh world around us, but
we need to know about it in order to be able to make
the problems go away. To make the world not so harsh.
These feelings we have, we've been told to push them
down, and try to forget.
Enough is enough.
Let me feel guilty for being white, because I know I
will not be punished for it. No one came into this world
choosing our race. We were born onto this planet the
way we are. Is it fair that minority groups get arrested
more than white people? Of course not! But fairness
does not seem to be the top priority in the justice system.
So I will speak up and look for organizations in my
community like Black Lives Matter or other groups focused
on equality. I choose to no longer be small and try to forget.
Because, quite frankly, silence is no longer an option.
Richard Myers
-Becca Donley, a young member of University Baptist Church (a
BPFNA Partner Congregation) in Minneapolis, MN, has grown
up in Peace Camp. This is the second of her sermons to be printed
in Baptist Peacemaker. She also preached during the Summer
Conference in St. Catharine's, ON, in 2014. (See "The Gift of
Imagination," page 10, Vol 34 No 4, October-December 2014.)
18 Baptist Peacemaker
OCT-DEC 2016
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of the Baptist Peacemaker October-December 2016
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