To the Editor:
I ran into a former student at the Gather In a few weeks ago.
He had recently done some time.
He’s not working because no one will hire an ex-con.
I remember him as a smart, hard-working kid, but that won’t matter. No one will see that. They’ll see the hardened criminal as he appears on paper. Every pathway to success will be closed off to him, and he’ll never escape the School-to-Prison Pipeline. He’ll end up slingin’, and when he gets pinched, it won’t be for weed, because now that marijuana is becoming legal, the poor communities of color will be forced out of the market by white, upper-middle-class capital investors and self-styled “yogis.”
No, he’ll catch a felony rap for the hard stuff, because that will be the only means available to him to make ends meet.
And here’s the kicker: all of this is by design.
This isn’t about “youth led astray” because he wasn’t. He’s been navigating his reality to the best of his abilities. He’s not “a good kid from a good home”; he was born and bred to be society’s bogeyman.
You are more afraid of this kid than you are of politicians who have almost unlimited power to destroy our lives, because they’ll do it slowly, and with a winning smile.
He is powerless to change the circumstances of his life and the lives of his community. But there are people with that power, and one of them is the District Attorney.
I hear the criticism that Andrea Harrington lacks experience. Then I consider my student’s story, and the stories of so many people like him that won’t ever be told, because there’s no political gain in telling them. I am forced to draw the conclusion that “experience” in a broken system is actually a detriment.
We don’t need a DA who has the experience of prosecuting a triple homicide, that’s a once-in-a-decade occurrence. We need one with an awareness of how the system pushes certain communities into poverty and keeps them there every single day. And is willing to use their position to lobby legislators into ensuring these communities are given opportunities to thrive.
We don’t need a District Attorney to personally try criminal cases. We need a District Attorney to take on the criminality of a broken and oppressive system.
And that is what Andrea Harrington has committed herself to doing.
Michael Vincent Bushy
Pittsfield
