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