Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.Robert Louis Stevenson

Inner Life Directions

Expanding Reality

Ggids

  • Art Classes and Bachelor Degrees in Prison

    Programs in several California prisons are showing that inmates are more than their worst deed.

    Prisons are not nice places, they’re harsh and violent. And yet the inmates are humans like the rest of us and respond to opportunities. In California, 25 inmates recently graduated with a Bachelor’s degree as part of California State University Los Angeles. They each received their degree in communications, thus being able to better have a job and create a better life once they are released, what Dara Yin, one of the graduates called the freedom to create better lives.

    There’s another program in 12 California prisons, where known artists teach various aspects of art. There are 15 guest artists for the 15 weeks program offered by the PAC, the Prison Arts Collective, a university-based program offering  arts curriculum specifically for prisons, and a global talent agency, Huxley. Wilo Perron and Brian Roettinger, two of the artists, will teach logo design for example, taking the PAC logo and redoing it going through all the steps that are involved.   There will also be classes in photography, cartooning, screen writing, illustrations, collage making, and even creative mindfulness. The program is aimed to “show the transformative power of art and the redemptive potential of self-expression.” The  offenses of the  inmates in this program do not matter, some have minor offenses some are lifers. Perron and Roettinger say  “We don’t ask them why they’re there or what they’ve done because really the focus of our program is about shifting identities and not having people only be known by the worst thing they’ve ever done. It’s to experience being in a collaborative, inclusive community and experience themselves as artists and students and collaborators and peers.” We need to recognize inmates as people, and programs such as these remind us to.

  • Business Leaders Against the Death Penalty

    Some 150 business leaders declaring themselves against the death penalty is seen as a boost toward ending it.

    Some 150 business leaders around the world have signed a declaration  asking for the end of the death penalty in every country. It is part of  Business Leaders Against the Death Penalty campaign launched a few months ago by one of its founders Richard Branson. Other signatories are business leaders like Francois Henri Pinault, Ben Cohen, Jerry Greenfield and Ariana Huffington. Others still  include the leaders of Unilever and Bayer. The declaration reads,  “As an irreversible and extreme form of punishment, the death penalty is inhumane, and it is irreconcilable with  human dignity. Its worldwide abolition is a moral imperative that all of humanity should support.”  At least 170 United Nations Members have abolished the death penalty in practice if not legally. In the United States, 23 states have abolished it, some have a moratorium and some have not used it. Still we hear of botched executions as in Oklahoma last October. There are still several states where the death penalty is not only practiced it is used without regards to how humane its execution method is. Responsible Business Initiative for Justice is the nonprofit which helped organize this campaign, its chief executive Celia Ouellette hopes that  signing on  well-known  business leaders will give momentum to their campaign to end the death penalty in the United States. One of the activist organization’s goal is to pressure the Biden administration to end the death penalty at the federal level.

    I follow sister Helen Prejean on Twitter and almost daily I am reminded of the injustice, the inequality and the inhumanity of the death penalty. Anything that can work to end it is welcomed.

  • Race and Forensic Anthropology

    The work of forensic anthropologists who work with police departments is making inroads debunking myths about race.

    Changes in forensic anthropology are blowing away myths about race! It’s a rather new field began in 1903, but the foundations laid by Ales Hrdlicka were faulty. He was a eugenicist who looted human remains in his search to classify humans into different races based on appearances and traits. Turns out skeletons can show age, height, sex, certain aspects of ancestry, but not race–that is because it is not possible.  The skull can be more telling and for a while there was a trait called a post-bregmatic depression, which  forensic anthropologists thought was only among those they called negroid. But that depression turned out to be present in other skulls as well. Since 1903 there has been a series of steps, each a step forward  to debunk the myth of race. The four racial groups Hrdlicka was eager to find made way for the concept of ancestry. But that proved to be inadequate. For example the skulls of Panamanians is distinct from those of Colombians, and that is due to the history of slavery and intermarriage. The preferred term now is population affinity. But it is still a controversial subject and not all forensic anthropologists  agree to go with population affinity—at least for the present.  One of the issues in finding the right terminology is what is deemed as possible mindsets associated with police departments. Since forensic anthropology deals with crime, contacts with police is part of their work. Police departments tend to prefer more categorical classifications. Yet the more progress there is in the field, the more the idea of race is shown to be the myth it is.

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