I want to thank everyone for this tremendous honor. Believe me, it is not false modesty when I say that I feel unworthy of this recognition. As many of you know, I just finished an unsuccessful campaign for public office. The best part of campaigning is the people that you meet. And it was just about a year ago that I met Peter Duisberg for the first time. Since then I have had about a dozen contacts with Peter, and on every occasion that we speak he expresses to me the absolute imperative of Peace. I don’t think that I have met anyone more tireless or committed to this cause in my life. And though I never had the opportunity to meet Annabelle, I will always be grateful for this day and for the opportunity to share the Duisberg name. And I hope that this award will inspire me to speak out ever more forcefully for the causes of Peace and Justice.
About 20 years ago I had the chance to travel to the island of Jamaica, and while I was there, I had a chance to have a conversation with an elderly Rastafarian man. He described me to the struggles of the Jamaican people who felt oppressed by their government. At the end of our talk, I said to him, “I wish you Peace.” When I said this, his eyes became fiery and he replied: “There can be no Peace without Justice.” I have been reminded of his words many times over the years, for instance I have seen protests when a citizen has been killed by the police and the demonstrators chant, “No Justice, No Peace.” And throughout the troubled world that we live in today, and as we celebrate World Peace Day this New Year, it seems to me the concepts of Peace and Justice are forever dependent upon one another.
When we say the word, Peace, I think we all have an idea of the concept that is involved. But the word Justice is one whose meaning is determined by the context of the moment and the passions of the speaker. We hear that criminals must be brought to justice, we conduct our trials at the Justice Centers, we describe a religion as being active in the field of social justice, and we hear that justice was or was not served in a particular case.
I think the best one word definition of justice is balance. Therefore we strive for balance between the individual citizen and the government, when we say that an offender must pay for his crime it is because we want to bring balance to the harm suffered by the victim, and when we speak of social justice we are attempting to balance the needs of the rich and the poor, the prominent and the destitute.
But when we look at our present criminal justice system, it is apparent that things are terribly out of balance. On the national level, the United States now has two million, three hundred thousand of its citizen behind bars, a far higher percentage of its population than any other nation on earth. Here in the State of Florida, our prison population recently passed the 100,000 mark. And just a mile or two west of we are this morning, the Sarasota County Jail has more then a thousand of our sons and daughter, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, locked up as we enter the New Year.
Now in addition to the human tragedy of having so many people behind bars, there is all of the resources we are devoting towards maintaining this prison industrial complex. For our present fiscal year here in the State of Florida, we will spend nearly Three Billion dollars solely on prisons, and we will spend over one hundred million dollars to continue to pursue a deeply flawed death penalty in a handful of cases. This is money that will not be spent on our childrens education or health-care, money not spent to care for our sick and elderly, money not spend to preserve our precious natural environment. And even though our Legislature has appropriated over 400 million dollars to open new prison beds in this coming year, it has simultaneously forced the Department of Corrections to eliminate inmate educational and drug treatment programs that have proven to be the most effective way to keep people from coming back to prison once they are released.
And here on the local level, not content with the thousand inmates already behind bars, Sarasota County is proceeding forward with plans to spend one hundred million dollars of our local tax money to build a new jail that we will inevitably fill with the homeless, the addicted and the mentally ill, while simultaneously cutting the programs that help these citizens avoid or surmount these problems in the first place.
Yet despite the tragedy of millions of our fellow citizens languishing behind bars, and the squandering of our resources to keep them there, we hear very little discussion from any of local office holders about criminal justice reform. If we continue down the path we are on, there will come a day when there are only two classes of citizens, inmates and their guards. But we don’t have to go down that path.
My call to you today is to not forget the prisoner in jail, to educate yourself about our laws and our court system and our sentencing practices. Justice Anthony Kennedy came to the Supreme Court 15 years ago as a rather conservative jurist, but once on the Court, and once he was exposed to the present madness of our criminal justice system, Justice Kennedy went before the American Bar Association a couple of years ago and said: "Our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too long," He recognized by these statements, the lack of balance and thus the lack of justice that permeates our present practices. If we are truly to be a nation that stands for the principles of freedom and equality, then we must all work together to restore balance to our definition of justice.
And my final comment about the relationship between peace and justice is exemplified by the great American, Eugene Debs. Debs had spent his life as a labor leader, in the late 19th century he fought for the rights of Railroad workers, laborers, and the common man. Five times Eugene Debs was a candidate for President of the United States, and in 1912—he received nearly a million votes. A few years later, as the United States prepared to enter World War One, Debs spoke out against war and militarism. He spoke out against the Draft and he appealed to man’s better nature. For his efforts, Debs was arrested and brought to trial by our Government and charged with sedition. At his trial, Debs represented himself but did not try to defend himself. Rather, he admitted to the jury that he had said exactly what was alleged, and he argued that his speech was protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Debs was convicted by the jury, and was facing a lengthy prison sentence, when he was asked by the Judge whether there was anything he wanted to say before sentence was passed. Debs did not plead for mercy, even though he was in poor health and knew that prison would likely shorten his life, as it ultimately did. Instead, Debs made one of the most beautiful statements ever heard in an American courtroom, concluding with the immortal lines:
"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
Truly none of us can find peace or live in peace with one another, unless we are also willing to fight for justice, and return a sense of balance to our nation, our communities and our people. And so on this New Years Day, which in many ways feels like the dawn of the 21st century, I wish you Peace and Justice.
