Who To Believe?
A few weeks ago, a trusted friend forwarded me an email from the mother of one of the inmates at Corcoran. There was a heatwave, she explained; there were no fans in the rooms and, with no ventilation, life for the inmates (many of whom were segregated) became unbearable. Several people were hospitalized. She wanted us to write to the warden.
I did. I was careful to denote that I had no personal knowledge of the conditions, but cautious not to mention the sender of the email, out of fear of retaliation. A couple of days later, my friend forwarded me another email from the original sender; apparently, her son received some relief and said, "I don't know what you did, mom, but they came to check the temperature."
Several days after these events I received a detailed email from the Corcoran warden. He wrote that the information I had was false and that I was misleading people, and attached a detailed heat protocol for the prison.
I had to sit back and breathe a bit. Perhaps other folks who do this kind of work have developed more of an emotional armor to fend off hostility from strangers. I find that I like wearing my fragility like a thin chiffon or gauze dress, with no sturdy protection; it makes me kinder and more open (I'll write on the corruption of the concept of fragility in a later post.) These days, as treading the dharma requires, I try to sit with my feelings awhile before I get defensive, but difficult sensations of shenpa ("hook") reverberate in my stomach.
I first learned about shenpa from Pema Chodron; she encourages us to sit quietly, identify the moment that we feel an attachment--a "hook"--ensnaring our feelings... and then choose a fresh alternative. I get "hooked" a lot, especially in adversarial situations, and so a brief moment of empathy and well wishing goes a long way.
If the warden is right, and the email we received misled us, I can understand his anger. Even if he wasn't right, he must have felt so taken aback by the avalanche of emails he received. Getting one from me, with my professional signature, must have been especially jarring. After much thought, I decided not to respond. But the incident raised a thorny question that has plagued me for almost twenty years of working in adversarial situations: How can I tell who to believe?
Back in Israel I sometimes found myself defending in court soldiers who beat up Palestinian prisoners or who looted someone's home. Their versions of the event sometimes matched, and sometimes deviated from, the official army version. I saw even more of this when I started reading B'tzelem reports on events in the Palestinian territories (later to become the Palestinian authority.) These tended to considerably diverge from the army's official position. After hearing more about all this from people whose honesty I had no reason to doubt, I came to a formula that I could live with: I believed about 80% of what I read in B'tzelem reports and about 20% of what I read in official military releases.
How should the formula change in California prisons? After the horrors exposed in Brown v. Plata, I confess I tend to doubt official versions (which is not to say I'm always right.) Mostly I try to resolve these quandaries rationally. Why would a person fabricate a heat wave complaint, worry and upset his mother, and get her to push an entire group of activists to call the warden? I simply cannot see a rational reason for this. It's a way to call attention to oneself that can't possibly result in any positive development--unless people really are seriously afflicted by the heat.
It's also true that often (but not always) these different versions are the product of misunderstandings. While I'm dismayed with the lethal outcomes of police violence, I don't believe that every single cop is a psychopath lying in wait to murder people of color without provocation. But we've seen that, even with videos, it's so hard to decide whose version of the events honestly represents not just what occurred in the objective world, but what happened within each participant.
How do you decide who to believe?
I did. I was careful to denote that I had no personal knowledge of the conditions, but cautious not to mention the sender of the email, out of fear of retaliation. A couple of days later, my friend forwarded me another email from the original sender; apparently, her son received some relief and said, "I don't know what you did, mom, but they came to check the temperature."
Several days after these events I received a detailed email from the Corcoran warden. He wrote that the information I had was false and that I was misleading people, and attached a detailed heat protocol for the prison.
I had to sit back and breathe a bit. Perhaps other folks who do this kind of work have developed more of an emotional armor to fend off hostility from strangers. I find that I like wearing my fragility like a thin chiffon or gauze dress, with no sturdy protection; it makes me kinder and more open (I'll write on the corruption of the concept of fragility in a later post.) These days, as treading the dharma requires, I try to sit with my feelings awhile before I get defensive, but difficult sensations of shenpa ("hook") reverberate in my stomach.
I first learned about shenpa from Pema Chodron; she encourages us to sit quietly, identify the moment that we feel an attachment--a "hook"--ensnaring our feelings... and then choose a fresh alternative. I get "hooked" a lot, especially in adversarial situations, and so a brief moment of empathy and well wishing goes a long way.
If the warden is right, and the email we received misled us, I can understand his anger. Even if he wasn't right, he must have felt so taken aback by the avalanche of emails he received. Getting one from me, with my professional signature, must have been especially jarring. After much thought, I decided not to respond. But the incident raised a thorny question that has plagued me for almost twenty years of working in adversarial situations: How can I tell who to believe?
Back in Israel I sometimes found myself defending in court soldiers who beat up Palestinian prisoners or who looted someone's home. Their versions of the event sometimes matched, and sometimes deviated from, the official army version. I saw even more of this when I started reading B'tzelem reports on events in the Palestinian territories (later to become the Palestinian authority.) These tended to considerably diverge from the army's official position. After hearing more about all this from people whose honesty I had no reason to doubt, I came to a formula that I could live with: I believed about 80% of what I read in B'tzelem reports and about 20% of what I read in official military releases.
How should the formula change in California prisons? After the horrors exposed in Brown v. Plata, I confess I tend to doubt official versions (which is not to say I'm always right.) Mostly I try to resolve these quandaries rationally. Why would a person fabricate a heat wave complaint, worry and upset his mother, and get her to push an entire group of activists to call the warden? I simply cannot see a rational reason for this. It's a way to call attention to oneself that can't possibly result in any positive development--unless people really are seriously afflicted by the heat.
It's also true that often (but not always) these different versions are the product of misunderstandings. While I'm dismayed with the lethal outcomes of police violence, I don't believe that every single cop is a psychopath lying in wait to murder people of color without provocation. But we've seen that, even with videos, it's so hard to decide whose version of the events honestly represents not just what occurred in the objective world, but what happened within each participant.
How do you decide who to believe?
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