Category: Justice Conversation

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Quotes on Justice and Love

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“Justice is Love correcting that which revolts against Love.” – Martin Luther King Jr. “Justice is what love looks like in public.” – Cornel West “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”  – Martin Luther King Jr. “Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment.”   – Mahatma Gandhi “I have the need to understand why we are so good at passing on violence and so poor at passing on love.” – Marie Deans “It is not enough for… read more

Episode 4: The Justice System within the Self – Part 2

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TRANSCRIPT Kim In our last episode, we began by talking about how we live under many different justice systems- through family, school, work, and society, and then Philipos, you brought up how there’s also a justice system within the self, and reminded us of your understanding of justice as being an unlocking and opening up. Philipos Yes, and that brought up your Opening the Door artwork, and we began talking about each of the pieces from the perspective of the justice system within the self. The symbols in the artwork gave us a lot of complex ideas to reflect on,… read more

Episode 3 : The Justice System within the Self – Part I

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TRANSCRIPT: Philipos In Today’s podcast, we’ll begin a series of conversations on our different justice systems, and what role love and opening up plays in them. So, we have how many examples? Like 10? Yeah. Kim Well, first of all, usually, if you say “justice system,” a listener thinks of something run by the government. So, it might be a combination of the municipal courts, the police officers, the jails, the state-run prison system, and including all the lawyers and court staff, and then on into the federal justice system. I think usually when people say or hear the phrase… read more

Episode 2 : Interdependence

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TRANSCRIPT:  Kim In this episode, we’ll be talking about how interdependence relates to justice.  Philipos I will start today’s justice conversation with a question – Is justice served among interdependent, dependent, or independent parties? It is self-evident to not make a dependent person, for example, children, accountable or responsible to certain aspects of the rule of law due to their lack of agency which results from their young age.  Independence is based on the idea that you do have agency: in other words, the ability to make your own decisions and take your own actions. So, from this perspective, consequences… read more

Episode 1: What Is Justice Conversation?

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TRANSCRIPT:  Kim Welcome to Justice Conversation. This podcast series brings together people who discuss holistic justice from different perspectives.  PhiliposHi, my name is Philipos Hailemichael, and I am a resident of the Bay Area in California. My mother tongue language is Tigrinya. Most of the perspective I share on this project will come from the Tigrinya culture and norms where I grew up, For our listeners information – Tigrinya (ትግርኛ) is of the Afroasiatic language family. It is commonly spoken in Eritrea and in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray Region. KimI’m Kim, and I’m from the United States. I started the Justice Conversation… read more

Matthew Part 6: What is Justice Epilogue

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On January 31, 2019, Anthony Ginez, the mitigator for Community Resources Initiative, who is working on Luis Rojas’ case with defense attorney Alexandria McClure and Harriet, the CRI videographer, came to Portland to interview me. They had interviewed members of Luis’ family and they wanted to talk with me again. They were making a presentation for the Federal Department of Justice, explaining why the death penalty was not appropriate for Luis. During the course of the afternoon, as Anthony and Harriet posed questions to me about my relationship with Matthew, I was forced to think about our entire history, about… read more

Matthew Part 5: Imagination

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“Even the quest for justice can turn into barbarism if it is not infused with a quality of mercy, an awareness of human frailty and a path to redemption. The crust of civilization is thinner than you think.”                              – David Brooks, The Cruelty of Call-out Culture, NT Times, January 14, 2019 “Under the new outlook multiplicity of material wants will not be the aim of life the aim will be rather their restriction consistently with comfort. We shall cease to think of getting what we can but we shall decline to receive what all cannot get.”       – M.K. Gandhi,… read more

Matthew Part 4: Compassion—a radical critique

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“I am a part of all that I have met . . .”                     Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Ulysses, line 18 “Jesus in his solidarity with the marginal ones is moved to compassion. Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness. In the arrangement of “lawfulness” in Jesus’ time, as in the ancient empire of Pharaoh, the one unpermitted quality of relation was compassion. Empires are never built or… read more

Matthew Part 3: We Are Not Innocent

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“Your grandmother was not teaching me how to behave in class. She was teaching me how to ruthlessly interrogate the subject that elicited the most sympathy and rationalization—myself. Here was the lesson: I was not an innocent.”                                                  –Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Between the World and Me,” 2015 By the time Matthew was murdered in 2008 I had been “ruthlessly” interrogating myself for thirteen years. I am not entirely sure how I came to this excruciating effort by which I had gradually come to know myself—to know that “I was not an innocent”— to accept responsibility for the harm I had… read more

Matthew Part 2: The nature of being human

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An unexamined life is not worth living – Socrates, 399 B.C. Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself. – Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1938 All three defense attorneys responded positively to my inquiry, expressing sorrow for my loss. I thanked them for that expression but stated my current and long-time desire to explore ways to turn this tragic mistake into something positive. I have sent each of them copies of Looking for Matthew. I have been counseled that the pace of such litigation is glacial, at best, and that the capital charges—the death penalty—in the indictment, may never be sought. Regardless, I… read more