Gerald Robinson on the Politics of Promise and Reform Inside and Beyond America’s Prisons | Education for Liberation

In this interview, Gerald Robinson talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about his book,  Education for Liberation: The Politics of Promise and Reform Inside and Beyond America’s Prisons.



“Identify a program in your community that has an open-arms approach to people like you.” ~Gerald Robinson

The Center for Advancing Opportunity is a research initiative based in Washington, D.C., which was created to identify various avenues to strengthen people’s educational knowledge and entrepreneurship, as well as investing money in scholars to create a solution to why so many people do not graduate high school on time or, if they do, they need remediation.

On a personal level, Gerald’s involvement with the justice system began in the mid-1980s, when he involved himself with young men who were at risk of going to jail. The genesis of the book began with the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, when Gerald connected with colleagues, one of whom became the co-editor of Education for Liberation, and spoke to them about criminal justice reform not being a partisan issue. The book sprang from an effort to reach out to people in all walks of life, including people who were incarcerated, correctional officers, people who work in think tanks, entrepreneurs and scholars, with the book thus springing out of the research and conversations so conducted.

Gerald notes that writing a book is a labor of love, and for him it was a matter of finding the right people to essentially write out the various chapters. The book focuses on the role of education in the criminal justice system, and that those who have taken education while incarcerated took up adult basic education, adult secondary education, vocational training and post-secondary courses. The second issue the book speaks of is the reintegration of formerly incarcerated people in society, and the third is essentially the point that education matters.

Gerald notes that 2.3 million Americans are presently incarcerated, most of whom are in state prisons, most of whom did not finish high school and 95% of whom will eventually leave prison. The attitude of individual states differ, with some states making those who are incarcerated and who do not have a high school diploma enter educational courses so they could get their high school diploma. Gerald notes that there are some 650,000 people who are released from incarceration every year, so the question is how these people will be reintegrated into society. He also notes that the United States imprisons more people, per capita, than any other nation in the Western world and cites that less transparent nations, such as China, could very well have a greater rate of imprisonment, but this isn’t officially recorded.

As an example of the kind of challenges former prisoners face when re-integrating into society, Gerald gives the example of someone who was released after 26 years. The individual has a government ID who received $200 - enough money to leave the prison and go to a transition house - and Gerald notes that the sum given can be higher or lower than that. Once at a transition house, the individual needs to find a job, and some states and counties have such transitional housing, while others do not. Transitional housing can also be offered by non-profit organizations or communities, and some organizations, such as those experienced by an author of a chapter of the book, help people not only find jobs but also offer a daily paycheck. Reconnecting with family is also another challenge, and Gerald gives the example of incarcerated women who have not seen their children for years.

Gerald refers to ex-prisoners being branded with “the scarlet letter F,” for “felon,” and gave the example of a former prisoner who, although presently a successful entrepreneur, found it difficult to get his business started once people realized he was a felon. Gerald acknowledges the Pavlovian response of backing away from someone whom one suddenly realizes was a felon is natural and needs to be worked through, and notes that, for such serious crimes as rape, drug dependency, elderly abuse and child molestation, there are limitations to the kind of jobs that former felons can apply for.

According to Gerald, ongoing studies indicate that around four dollars are returned to society for every dollar spent on educating incarcerated people, and that the rate of people being re-imprisoned is only around 7%, compared to “double digits” for state and national figures for those who didn’t receive such education. Other studies indicate that education does have an impact on the lives of those incarcerated, such as bringing up the individual’s sense of self-worth, as well as on society in general, and Gerald also brings up the rigor and methodology of the studies undertaken, which he notes can also be improved to come up with better solutions and implementation. He also notes that, for the correctional officers, there is an increased factor of safety, as there is a decrease in the number of those referred to such correctional methods as isolation when an educational program is implemented.

Gerald notes that the questions that also needs to be posed are “when,” “how” and “why,” because educational programs don’t result in 100% success, with some people still undertaking violent activity even while taking up an educational program. He notes that internal and external variables also come into play and notes that more can be done, pointing out a law that has affected federal prisons, whereas most prisoners aren’t in federal facilities. Gerald also remarks that the present conversation about the role of prisons in American society is moving away from punitive punishment towards rehabilitating those who are incarcerated. He also remarks that there should be more coordination so that those who have been released from prison should know where to go once they are released, and that those who help such individuals should be the ones to make the first move to ensure that former felons get the support they need.

Gerald notes that his support for education within the prison system is the same as his support for education for all human beings. He also remarks that his support for education for incarcerated individuals doesn’t mean he supports taking money away from those who aren’t, and that those who have been victimized likewise deserve “a place at the table” when speaking on the issue of education in prisons.

Purchase from Amazon:  Education for Liberation: The Politics of Promise and Reform Inside and Beyond America’s Prisons by Gerald Robinson

Howell Woltz on Restoring America by Returning to Its Constitution

In this interview, Howell W. Woltz talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about his book, Restoring America: by Returning to Its Constitution.



“Can you imagine any other profession, any other job in the world, where you can screw up eight out of ten times and keep your job and not have any penalty for destroying and ending someone’s life?” ~Howell W. Woltz

Howell Woltz has, since 1977, been speaking on the topic of the loss of constitutional freedom, which he attributes to Progressivism. He notes that the constitution is a contract between the people and the government, and in the constitution, what is now known as the federal government was intended to be limited in scope and powers, with the states, through the Senate, and the people, through the House of Representatives, would approve the actions of the government. At the time of the constitution’s implementation, the government had only 17 duties and could only prosecute 3 crimes. By comparison today, the present government has 1.97 million employees, with a pay average of $100k/year, some of whom are responsible for creating 314,000 plus laws in the past 40 years, laws which weren’t voted into existence, even though these laws are supposed to be passed, according to the Constitution, by Congress.

Howell points out that the adoption of Progressivism was where the original constitutional intent was no longer followed. He traced the main event behind the rise of Progressivism (which is a sociopolitical ideology which supports Statism) from a series of lectures taught by John Ruskin at Oxford University to the upper British crust. One of these was Cecil Rhodes, who was one of the driving forces behind British imperialism in the 19th century and who helped lay the stage for the Boer War, and who shared Ruskin's view that it was the white man’s obligation to rule the world benevolently.

Thanks to the 300,000-plus criminal laws, Howell points out that, according to Harvey Silverglate, the average American breaks an average of three felony laws each day, then points out that, which makes it easy for prosecutors to target opponents and take them down. This leads to some 2.3 million Americans being in the federal prison system (compared to about half a million in gulags at the peak of the Soviet Union’s power), with another 7.1 million people under court supervision and 71 million Americans now having a criminal conviction of one kind of another. Because of the Progressivist basis, these laws are outright racist, and Harvey gives the example of the difference in sentencing between a white country club drug user and a black, poor-neighborhood drug user. He points to an article done by undercover reporter James O’Keefe who uncovered evidence of some of the two million Progressives who openly stated that they work for the cause of the Democratic Socialists of America and that they are to promote Progressivism, rather than work for the American people, which is the job for which they are hired.

The first openly Progressive president was Woodrow Wilson, one of whose acts was to fire every black employee in the United States government. He was supported by such Progressivists as J. P. Morgan who, in the 19th century, began buying out newspapers to consolidate news media. Howell points to Ben Bagdickian who, in 1983, wrote that there were only 50 major American media corporations from the thousands that had originally existed. Fast forward to 2018, and only six major corporations in the United States now control 92% of American media content, which includes movies, cable, books and magazines, and that these corporations are controlled by 15 billionaires who support the Progressivist agenda. Howell sees social media as the only reasonable alternative to mainstream media, for all of social media’s shortcomings, and praises millenials for being extremely skeptical about advertising and messages from only “one voice.” That said, he notes that social media companies are now starting to clamp down on messages that don’t support the Progressive agenda.

Howell notes that kids nowadays have no idea what’s in the Constitution, compared to his childhood, when copies of the Constitution were on the wall and classes were taught in civics. Devolution is something which Howell notes may be necessary, in a way that returns the United States back to its constitutional roots, pointing out that, if all men are equal and are to be treated equal and fairly under the law, there is nothing to progress beyond that. He notes that, in the Constitution, power from the government derives from the people, which runs counter to the 17th Amendment, which effectively removed the link between the people and the Senate which, in turn, leads to Senators not being beholden to the people they are supposed to serve.

Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations, which laid the foundations for the classical free market economy, noted, according to Howell, that corporations were “a nuisance,” as they bribed and influenced politicians to better their own economic position. Howell points out that corporations have created the present situation where they are beholden to no single nation, and have created monopolies where large banks absorbed small banks which shut down because they couldn’t meet the financial reserves demanded by law - the kind of reserves that only the larger banks could afford. In the Constitution, only the citizens in the district where a politician was running could contribute to his campaign funds, and as corporations are now legal citizens of the United States, they are able to use their own monies to swing things their way.

Corporations becoming citizens sprang from an 1886 case of Sta. Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, when the president of the Newburgh and New York Railway Company, which stood to benefit from a Southern Pacific Railroad victory, J. C. Bancroft Davis, was made the court clerk on the case. He added, in the court notes, that Chief Justice Waite, who had said that the case was not about the legal aspect of corporate personhood, agreed that corporations were citizens, based on such a statement; and it is because of this entry into the books that corporations are now considered citizens of the United States.

Howell himself has had experience with the system’s injustice, as he was imprisoned for 87 months, consisting of 29 prison moves, until he was released because he was never charged with a crime. He was forced to move to Poland when he was threatened by the marshals of the same judge who sent him to prison to stop writing what he was writing “or else,” as well as harassing his family. He notes that 82% of all people who are imprisoned or executed are either innocent of the crimes they have been accused of or have been charged improperly, with these figures coming from a court review of 5,760 cases over a 23-year period at the state and federal levels, which was reported in a Columbia University study co-authored by Professor James S. Leibman, called “A Broken System: The Persistent Patterns of Reversals of Death Sentences in the United States.” The study also showed that, in 73% of all capital cases, the person involved was executed despite gross violations of his rights. Prosecutors and judges, Howell points out, have judicially granted themselves immunity, which makes them non-prosecutable for the mistakes they made.

Purchase from Amazon: Restoring America: By Returning to Its Constitution by Howell W. Woltz

Michelle Deen on Rethinking Family Values, Moral Politics and the Culture War (Saving America's Grace)

Michelle Deen talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com about her book, Saving America’s Grace: Rethinking Family Values, Moral Politics and the Culture War.



“Democracy requires a high level of moral character.” ~Michelle Deen

Michelle is a marriage and family therapist who specializes in human development and family relations, as she was interested in how families influence emotional and psychological development. The book discusses the breakdown of character in families, culture and politics as well as how to turn this breakdown around, which Michelle notes will likely take generations. She had initially thought about writing the book during the George W. Bush campaign run against John Kerry, in 2004, when “family values” rhetoric was used to make families fearful about where America’s culture and country were heading, rhetoric which Michelle found to be misleading. She didn’t write it then, but when the US presidential campaign of 2016 rolled around, Michelle realized that a conversation about culture and morality was still relevant, hence her eventually writing the book.

Michelle’s viewpoint comes from decades of working with families for nearly three decades, where she saw that the image a family projected had no correlation with how healthy the relationships were amongst its members and how sound the environment was for raising children. She had interacted with troubled teenagers who came from families which projected an image of traditional stability, teenagers who were, by their actions, essentially screaming for help, and when the family was brought together Michelle realized that the problems weren’t with the children alone but ran through the family. This made her realize that there was a lot of focus on how a family was supposed to look, and this made her inquire into the function of the family, which included the quality of the interpersonal relationships within it.

Michelle notes that “family values” is associated with a family comprised of a mother, a father and the children, with the father in charge, where children obey and everything is black and white - the so-called “Biblical” type of family which, Michelle notes, wasn’t the norm even during Biblical times. She remarks that patriarchal values have fallen “by the wayside” over the past decades, with some positive results being women being able to own their own credit cards and to live their lives the way they choose, spousal abuse being recognized as a concern and divorce becoming acceptable.

Michelle remarks that the “traditional” family is no longer the norm, and the values that should be adhered to in a family should be reassessed, with the objective of raising children who are self-sufficient, solid in who they are, of good character and capable of becoming good citizens. In this vein, Michelle remarks that, rather than raise “obedient” children, families should raise children who have are cooperative and who have a solid enough sense of themselves and their own internal moral compass to stand up to what they see as not being right, as “obedient” children do what they’re told to stay out of trouble. She notes that children fundamentally desire love, acknowledgement and appreciation from their parents, and gives an example of an authoritative parent being able to set the rules and consequences without needing to whip out a belt to enforce obedience, rather than being a parent who attempts to become the child’s friend as a way to compensate for any real or imagined wrongs the parent might have committed against the child.

Michelle remarks that the present situation in politics doesn’t just stem from Donald Trump, whose behavior on the campaign trail she found “shocking.” She opined that politics has been lacking in moral character for a long time and that money and backdoor agreements have essentially undermined morality in that realm. Michelle notes that politicians should be examples of morality, making decisions that are in the best interest of their people and their country, but this falls by the wayside because of the need to get reelected. She points out that, in order to self-govern (which is the essence of a democracy), people need a sense of doing right by others, which is called “virtue,” which is something that Michelle believes has been lost.

The phrase “Culture War” began as rhetoric in the mid-1980s, which came from the Republican Party and the religious right and which was an attempt to “straighten out” American culture by legislating Biblical principles to keep everyone and everything in place. Michelle notes that America is a democracy, rather than a theocracy, and such wouldn’t work. In response to “cultural war,” Michelle states that a “cultural evolution” is needed, so that people can evolve spiritually, by focusing on religion as tool intended to enable a person to become a better human being.

Michelle notes that a lot of cultural norms are abnormal but are so widespread they seem normal, and gives the example that most Americans are presently more interested in the brand of bag owned by well-known social media celebrities than they are with the people who are killed in the wars that the United States fights. She notes that people have lost track about what’s right and what’s not.

Michelle’s website is michelledeen.com.

Purchase from Amazon: Saving America’s Grace: Rethinking Family Values, Moral Politics and the Culture War by Michelle Deen