In the Heart of a Mother
Minneapolis is justifiably proud of its many hometown institutions, but none are more precious than our parks and lakes.
Coming in close second to these natural wonders might be the annual MayDay Parade, brought to us since 1975 by the artists who comprise In the Heart of the Beast Puppet & Mask Theatre.
Back then, the company called themselves the Powderhorn Puppet Theatre, in honor of the large park that gives the neighborhood its name.
To most people in south Minneapolis, my home and hometown, Powderhorn Park is synonymous with this yearly celebration of community, an event so grassroots you can see dirt under the fingernails of everyone involved.
Powderhorn Park is an urban neighborhood, to be sure, not an idyll.
Peace, love and gigantic puppets rule one day out of the year, but the other 364 days are about just getting by.
Until the unthinkable happens.
Four boys, all 14-16 years old, attacked a woman and her two children in the park last week, sexually assaulting the woman at gunpoint with her children nearby.
Police following their tracks in the snow discovered the boys in a nearby garage in the act of assaulting two teenage girls.
What's your first instinct when you hear about these crimes? After you black out momentarily from rage, of course.
Do you want blood? Explanations? Systems to blame, like the talk radio men who wondered why this happened? (their conclusion: these kids should have been locked up in juvie the first time they shoplifted candy.
That woulda learned 'em!) I couldn't stop thinking about what drives a fourteen-year-old child to commit such a horrific act of violence.
My life in feminist activism has been about exposing the hypocrisy of a society that claims to worship both "family values" and "individual freedom," even if the latter implies the freedom to be poor, to be desperate, to abuse one another.
But I write and think these things a mile outside of the Powderhorn Park neighborhood.
No one has attacked me lately.
When I shed tears of frustration reading an interview with Sister Helen Prejean in the August 2010 issue of The Sun ("To some extent violence is part of our nature," she said, "but compassion is too.
Seeking justice for everybody is also part of human nature") I was on the treadmill at the YWCA, not lying in a hospital bed.
What the hell do I know? Not much.
Yesterday afternoon, "the mother in the news" shared what she knows.
Excerpts: I find it ironic to have had this experience as I currently study nonviolence, restorative justice and the healing of childhood trauma.
I got to put my studies and my practice of mindfulness into play as the incident unfolded.
The whole time I made a conscious choice to see the boys as human beings, not to see them as evil or bad.
I focus my attention not on the boys' actions but the pain behind their actions.
I see those boys as hurting, scared children who didn't get the kind of nurture, love and care that they needed.
I try to hold them now in compassion and hope that they might get the support they need to reconnect to their essential goodness.
With the system of justice that we currently use, I'm hopeless that will happen.
This is exactly what Prejean told David Cook, her interviewer: "as a society, we have to examine our belief that sever punishment is the way to restore order.
The main objective of prisons is to keep society safe, not to cause prisoners pain simply because they caused others pain.
" Similarly, the Powderhorn mother wrote: At one point the boys asked for our skis.
I wish they could have taken them and used them and experienced the pure joy of gliding in the fresh snow, getting winded from exertion and breathing in cool, fresh air.
Please send them all the love you can muster.
I think they really need it.
To wish joy and love upon the one who has damaged your body and soul is an act of strength so confounding, so beyond comprehension, that it could only have come from a mother.
Not a mama grizzly, mind you, a creature prone to violence and homicidal rage: A MOTHER.
A caregiver.
A nurturer.
A person who is connected, not isolated.
A mother is what I am, but it's also what I hope to be.
Thank you, Powderhorn mother, Powderhorn Park, and all in my Minneapolis family.
Coming in close second to these natural wonders might be the annual MayDay Parade, brought to us since 1975 by the artists who comprise In the Heart of the Beast Puppet & Mask Theatre.
Back then, the company called themselves the Powderhorn Puppet Theatre, in honor of the large park that gives the neighborhood its name.
To most people in south Minneapolis, my home and hometown, Powderhorn Park is synonymous with this yearly celebration of community, an event so grassroots you can see dirt under the fingernails of everyone involved.
Powderhorn Park is an urban neighborhood, to be sure, not an idyll.
Peace, love and gigantic puppets rule one day out of the year, but the other 364 days are about just getting by.
Until the unthinkable happens.
Four boys, all 14-16 years old, attacked a woman and her two children in the park last week, sexually assaulting the woman at gunpoint with her children nearby.
Police following their tracks in the snow discovered the boys in a nearby garage in the act of assaulting two teenage girls.
What's your first instinct when you hear about these crimes? After you black out momentarily from rage, of course.
Do you want blood? Explanations? Systems to blame, like the talk radio men who wondered why this happened? (their conclusion: these kids should have been locked up in juvie the first time they shoplifted candy.
That woulda learned 'em!) I couldn't stop thinking about what drives a fourteen-year-old child to commit such a horrific act of violence.
My life in feminist activism has been about exposing the hypocrisy of a society that claims to worship both "family values" and "individual freedom," even if the latter implies the freedom to be poor, to be desperate, to abuse one another.
But I write and think these things a mile outside of the Powderhorn Park neighborhood.
No one has attacked me lately.
When I shed tears of frustration reading an interview with Sister Helen Prejean in the August 2010 issue of The Sun ("To some extent violence is part of our nature," she said, "but compassion is too.
Seeking justice for everybody is also part of human nature") I was on the treadmill at the YWCA, not lying in a hospital bed.
What the hell do I know? Not much.
Yesterday afternoon, "the mother in the news" shared what she knows.
Excerpts: I find it ironic to have had this experience as I currently study nonviolence, restorative justice and the healing of childhood trauma.
I got to put my studies and my practice of mindfulness into play as the incident unfolded.
The whole time I made a conscious choice to see the boys as human beings, not to see them as evil or bad.
I focus my attention not on the boys' actions but the pain behind their actions.
I see those boys as hurting, scared children who didn't get the kind of nurture, love and care that they needed.
I try to hold them now in compassion and hope that they might get the support they need to reconnect to their essential goodness.
With the system of justice that we currently use, I'm hopeless that will happen.
This is exactly what Prejean told David Cook, her interviewer: "as a society, we have to examine our belief that sever punishment is the way to restore order.
The main objective of prisons is to keep society safe, not to cause prisoners pain simply because they caused others pain.
" Similarly, the Powderhorn mother wrote: At one point the boys asked for our skis.
I wish they could have taken them and used them and experienced the pure joy of gliding in the fresh snow, getting winded from exertion and breathing in cool, fresh air.
Please send them all the love you can muster.
I think they really need it.
To wish joy and love upon the one who has damaged your body and soul is an act of strength so confounding, so beyond comprehension, that it could only have come from a mother.
Not a mama grizzly, mind you, a creature prone to violence and homicidal rage: A MOTHER.
A caregiver.
A nurturer.
A person who is connected, not isolated.
A mother is what I am, but it's also what I hope to be.
Thank you, Powderhorn mother, Powderhorn Park, and all in my Minneapolis family.
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