Hospice Prisons and the Compassion Asterisk

[Music]

how compassionate are you

is your compassion conditional

let me tell you the story of my friend

kenny

kenny was born poor in rural west

virginia

early into his education it was found

that he had an exceptionally low iq

he was often made fun of and beaten up

by other children

after several skirmishes with other

children kenny’s mother

took him out of school as kenny matured

physically

he mentally stayed about 13 years old

when he was 27 kenny fell in love

she was a pretty brunette lady one night

in an effort to court her kenny went to

her house

she probably felt pity for him so she

allowed it

now at this moment you may feel

compassion for kenny

after all kenny is a product of

circumstance

he through no fault of his own had lived

a difficult life

now what if i told you that after she

rebuffed his attempts to kiss her

kenny now about six foot three pinned

her down

and raped her she screamed

and kenny choked her in order to stop

her from screaming

and he stopped her from breathing

kenny was sentenced to life in prison

for first-degree murder

when i met kenny he was about 50 years

old

and in the time that i followed his

illness i watched dementia

steal his gentle giant personality

soon he became aggressive and had to be

medicated

until his death alone

in a cell does kenny a murderer and

rapist

deserve your compassion

some of you may be saying yes but

consider that maybe because

i just told you his story had i said

i know this guy kenny he’s a rapist to

murderer he died alone in prison

would you have cared

would it have made a difference

would it have met the threshold of your

compassion asterisk

today i want to challenge you

when i say the words compassion

what do you think of gandhi

mother teresa let’s take it one step

further

to whom do you show compassion the poor

the homeless we like to think of

ourselves as compassionate people

however i would posit that

unintentionally

there’s an asterisk behind the word

we are compassionate to those society

tells us

deserve it we are compassionate

to those who make us look good in front

of our friends

family clergy community

but are we truly compassionate

without the asterisk

there’s a movement in the prisons right

now

that started with hospice many of you

are aware

of the concept of hospice it has

provided

care for those who have been diagnosed

with six months or less to live

it promotes the ideology that no one

should die alone

it is compassion personified

and amplified

but what about kenny and the millions of

other people who

are incarcerated do they deserve our

compassion

some would say no

but if that is the case then we have to

acknowledge the asterisk and that we

may be we may not be

the society that we fancy ourselves to

be

howard zinn once said i am convinced the

imprisonment

is a way of pretending to solve the

problem of crime

it does nothing for the victims of crime

but it promotes

at the perpetuation of the idea of

retribution

thus maintaining the endless cycle of

violence in our culture

it is a cruel and useless substitute for

those

elements unemployment

poverty homelessness greed

that are often at the root of most

punished crime

it indeed must be a tribute to the small

number

of men and women who are in the prison

system and survive it

maintaining their humanity

how do you maintain your humanity

can we change our asterisk

by changing the way we allow people to

die when

they are in the care of the government

i believe that yes we can my research

has shown

that by teaching people how to care for

each other

inmate violence statistics decrease

employee turnover in prisons decreases

and the cost of prison health care

decreases

teaching people the concept of

compassion

profoundly changes them

there are those people who would say

they took a life

why should theirs be made better

i certainly feel compassion for those

people who have been touched by violence

but would you want to be

judged by the one worst

thing that you did on the very

worst day of your life for the rest

of your life

the provision of hospice is different

in the non-incarceration world than it

is in the incarcerated world

inmates care for each other

this becomes more important because many

inmates

are abandoned by their families after a

while

in prison this makes their prison family

that much more important and it becomes

compassion to each other

before we go i would like to share with

you one final story

it is that of james and robert

it’s one of the most powerful things i

have ever witnessed in prison hospice

james was a black man he had served most

of his adult life

in prison after being diagnosed

with terminal cancer he was put into the

prison hospice program

and given an inmate volunteer

robert robert was also doing life and

was slightly younger than james

robert was in prison for crimes he

committed as a white supremist

tattooed on his knuckles were the words

white power

at the time of james’s death

robert was called in to sit with him

there i watched him with his white

power hands gently

wiped the brow of a black man

racism had ceased to exist

it was just robert and his friend

james robert took james’s hand

and he brushed the tears falling down

his face

as he bent down and whispered to him

it’s okay my friend go home

in love

james passed away that night and robert

learned

that death has no prejudice

and human compassion has no

bounds so now again i challenge you

think about your compassion asterisk

who are the exceptions to your rule

if there’s anything that i wish you to

take from this tedx talk today

i hope it’s this

no one deserves to die alone

and everyone deserves compassion

even within the asterisk