Part of my job, for at least 25 years, was instruction and training about my profession. As a Certified Addiction Professional (CAP), my work was to educate staff, patients and the public.
My organization had a contract with the Department of Corrections (DOC). Each Spring our residential program patients spent an entire day with instructors learning about integrity, addictions and living in the world as a sober person.
For whatever reason, that Spring, my staff (from the outpatient program) and I were dealing with a lot of victims of violence, both domestic and public. Domestic violence was on my mind.
The DOC in-patient program asked me to come and present to their program. I didn’t realize that this DOC program was 100% male. My presentation was on how to stop violence in your lives, either as a victim or as a perpetrator. As the patients got involved in the discussion, we got into this idea about large people hitting people that are smaller than they are. I expressed an opinion that in general, it is a situation that should be avoided. Large people have no business hitting and pushing smaller people. We then talked about the concept of anger and whether or not anger was a reason and justification to push violence on another person.
As one, this crowd of approximately 100 men, shut down. They were done with my instruction regardless of whether I was done with my instruction. To this day, I don’t know what the trigger was. I assume it was the concept that our feelings (anger) had to be separated from our actions (violence). I was never invited back to the all day in-service. I must point out that the program managers were also male.
I have been thinking hard about this incident as I watch ICE agents harshly and violently push and hurt people who are much smaller than they are. ICE agents do not appear to have remorse for their own violent behavior.
ICE agents are having a conversation with themselves that gives them a reason to be hurtful and to inflict pain and anguish on others. Sometimes, I wonder what this conversation is? I am talking to myself and I have to justify my behavior, what do I say to myself? “These brown people are criminals and blood suckers.” “These people steal from the economy and that money comes directly from me, I’m getting rid of them!” Or do they go with the white supremist story: “I’m so much better than a brown person, get rid of these people, they belong on the bottom of the pile anyway.” In the face of your own violence, do you tell yourself that you are still a good person? Do you say “this is a job, I’m not responsible for what happens to the brown people?” Or even worse is the objectification of these humans, perhaps you decide that they aren’t really humans, you call them something else. This is another way to justify hurting humans.
What do you say to make it okay to hurt, maim or kill another human being? I’m not talking about war here. I’m talking about storming into someone’s home, declaring that person a criminal and then beating back their wife and children. Then comes the transport of the immigrant “criminal” and the housing in horrible conditions. As a human being, how are you okay with putting another person in inhumane conditions without at least allowing that person to speak for themselves in front of a judge?
Again, the concept that feelings are not justification for actions. Violence and hurting other human beings is never okay. Please don’t tell me that war has always been around and so therefore will always be around. I don’t believe that. For tens of thousands of years humans did not brush their hair or bathe. That changed. Violence can go the way of the filthy human. That means to disappear into the ether.