i stood yesterday before the librarians of harvard, with kevin wallen and gile campbell looking on. my message was well received. postcards to pass the message on. destiny productions to deliver on a contract. roberto mighty, videographer. in my kitchen thursday morning listening to bob seger sing turn the page. out there in public expression space with microphone held low in my hand, talking to interested smiles and nods and understanding that we are building our environment. wonderful email back from michael maltese asking me for links to entrepreneurs in developing countries who are using technology to benefit their community in some fashion, with a closing ps that made me smile.
ps: As an attendee of the 1998 HLS Cyberlaw conference, I can attest to how far the Berkman Center has come so quickly, such that now it is internationally renowned as a center for excellence in the study of the internet and society.
smile
then this morning raw flow from kevin, who is in cambridge visiting with gile to plan our conference and concert in jamaica, kingston, at the terra nova, april 16-17 if the date clears on the commissioner’s calendar. notes from the meeting:
restorative justice
need for a paradigm shift in approach to crime
seeing the shift as the same as is needed in education
seeing opportunity for the correctional service to produce it completely consistent with its mission
seeing how doing so can elevate the status of the service and the officers in it
seeing the key as the formation of a self-perpetuating cohort of human beings at bottom who see that mutual support of each other in a spiritually centered learning community is key to standing tall instead of begging and complaining
make the system work and look good
keys are: no warder is asked to do “extra” work without extra pay
warders are security officers, security their primary mission; consistent with this mission provide a secure framework within which a learning community among those restrained can form and thrive
here’s kevin:
I pride myself in trying to do the right thing, but I know sometimes my desire to do the right thing gets the better of me. I want so badly to see a difference in the world that sometimes I put everything else a side and try to accomplish that and sometimes that is to my detriment.
The preogram SET has come to mean more to me than I even emagined it would mean however it is one of the most powerful things and it has brought homw a lot of things for me. It is said the the man that has not found something for which he would die perhaps has not sufficient reasons to live. For me SET is the thing for which I would die, but at the same time I don’t to die for it I can live for it, to do it, to make it happen. And each day that I live I think I am that much closer to achieving the goals setforth by SET even though the pieces are still coming into place.
Each year I visit Harvard law school and more than anything a man who has become my friend, mentor and partner is this project Charley. The intention is always to explore some idea to do someething that would get us closer to acieving our goals and each year we do that and then some. For me each year when we get together its most amazing, not because I get to come to harvard and speak and hang out but because I get an opportunity to see people who are succesful and It is a part of their lives they are succesful and they expect to be succesful, not a group of people who are dreaming of making thngs happen but they are actrually making it happen and it is not a big deal. When they get together it is not about trying to make something happen they are making them happen.
I listened to Charley talk to a young man today who was planning a confrence and the confidence in which he spoke was amazing there was no dowt that this was going to happen as a matter of fact it seems as though all the pieces were already in place and they are just executing even thought he was just at the planning stage. The key however was how charged the entire environment was everyone was working on a project, but the key was everyone was expected to be succesful everyone was expected to win. And indirectly the environment itself was an amazing support.
I got to thinking that this kind of thing is the very thing that was missing from many of the environments that I see in Jamaica every day people are not expected to win and as a result they do not expect others to win. It is a big deal when someone accomplish something amazing, success does not seem to be the norm. there seem to be more pretence among us than anything else. We don’t support each other and success seems to elude us, the environment is charged with negativity and that seems ok because we don’t seem to know any better.
A medicore environment says if something good happens great, but if it doesn’t then oh well next time. At the Berkman Centre you are not forced to win you are expected to win you are expected to be succesful and somehow the environment supports that.
For the longest time I have wondered what I want the SET environment to look like and now I know. I want it to look like success I want it to be an environment where the people in it are expected to win, where success is not a surprise, it is the norm.
And now Charley I want to talk directly to you. Your role in my life is still been revealed to me each and every day. I learn so much from you it is amazing, it is what you say and what you don’t say. It is the way you walk and the way you sit. You walk with a rythim and you sit in thought, always shaking your head and leaning forward when you are ingaged in conversation. Ther is no thought ever of you not having an interest and this week I have observed you a little more than usual as a result of something you said. You told us about speaking one third and let the other person speak two thirds you also talked about the fact that we always over estimate what others contribute to a dispute and under estimate what we contribute. And thought I tried to put that into practice this week I saw on three ocassions when you began to say something I piped up and you never finished your thought and as I realized what I was doing I tried to stop myself and get you back into the zone to finish your statement it seems the moment had passed and I missed the message I might have gotten from your message which makes me wonder how many times have I done that before this week. This is a most wonderful lesson and one that will serve me well.
I told you have my financial issues and it pains me deeply to come to you but I feel like you are the one person in this world that I can trust to tell what I am going through and somethimes its not that I want you to help me sometimes I really just want to share with womeone and you are all I seem to have that I can do that with. But the solutions you always seem to come up with are always fantastic the thought of being able to have \Harvard as a client for destiny is wonderful and I so appreciate you pointing this out. And again you said something which I too will use in my every day life which if you want to help someone out a handout is never the answer, a loan too, is not the answer but if you can develop a business relationship whe the person that seems to be the way to go and I so appreciate that thank you.
Finally tonight I went to the talk that professor Ogletree put on and first of all it was great but it was not the talk that was so great. I went to dinner with the folks after and there was about thirty persons in the room all black folks all professionasl mostly Judges and Lawyers. When we went around the table and each person introduced themselves it seem to go from strenght to strenght. And then I was asked to speak a bit on the Jamaica project and I did which sparked an amazing conversation but what strucked me in all that is at the end Prof. Ogletree spoke of a time in 1921 when a group of black folks wanted someone to come and address then at harvard and the person that they got to speak was Marcus Garvey when he said that I felt so proud I felt that I was the marcus grvey today bringing with me from jamaica the message of Students Expressing Truth, a message of love, a message of hope, a message of self love,self reliance and a message of hope.
I think we take lightly what we are up to but Charley, we are on to something and I really want to thank you. And I promise you whatever I have to do to keep Destiny going I will because it is an intregual part of all this. It is the production house that produces this story. I way all that to simply say thank you and lets do this. This trip has been most wonderful. Thank you and I can’t say that enough
i see a direction in which we are going.
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