MAG-Riverside Lawyer 0705 300373 - Riverside County Bar ...

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scribed to anymore. I told myself that the man hadn’t touched me, andI didn’t perceive him as a physical threat.“I’m not going to lie and tell you that I didn’t feel the sting ofhumiliation. All the customers looked at me as if they expected me toact. I put my head down and waited for my food to arrive. I told mygirlfriend that it was extremely difficult to sit there and do nothing, butnothing is what I intended to do…“And that is the rub. I was committing the bravest act of my newfree life, but because it was an absence of action, occurring in my interiorworld, nobody could witness it.“When we are little boys and girls, we develop our understanding ofheroism by the deeds that heroes do. First as young children, we watchcartoon superheroes on Saturday morning TV. Our superheroes act.They crush meteors headed for earth. They defeat space armies. Evenbiblical heroes like Samson slay armies with one big bone.“As we grow older, we perceive the firemen who run into burningbuildings as heroes because they act to save lives. Heroism is equatedwith action.“But for the parolee, our measure of heroism is different. We areheroic when we don’t act. When we don’t pick up the needle again.When we don’t pick up the bottle. When we don’t commit domesticviolence. When we don’t pick up a gun. Or when I didn’t act to stabthat mentally ill man who disrespected me with the most vile, racistterms.“We are heroes because we are acting against every instinct in ourbodies telling us to do what we have always done, and that is give up.It takes great courage to act against our biography. The story we havealways told ourselves about our lives. That we are losers. That lifehasn’t given us the breaks. That hope is for weak people.“We are heroes because we have altered our imaginations of whatcan be. You can’t see the moment when I tell myself that I want to havehope. You can’t notice the minute when I choose to believe that effortwill pay off. You can’t witness the instant when I decide that I want tocontemplate my own posterity. All this occurs in the landscape of thesoul. And so our heroism is silent and without pomp and pageantry.That is the beauty of today. We acknowledge that time has revealedwhat couldn’t be known in the beginning.“I am a believer in change. Remarkable change. Miraculouschange. I am a believer in compassion for the struggle that one mustgo through in order to achieve change. In my memoir, I chronicle howhard it was for me to change. There was in my mind a belief that I hadlived for too long on the other side of taboo. And that this disqualifiedme from ever being able to live on the side of beauty and virtue. Ithought that my crimes would be a permanent stigma on me, like thestain of Cain.“But what I found was a willingness on the part of many people toaccept me as a new man, worthy of acceptance on today’s terms. Inactuality, I was my own worst critic. People were treating me wonderfullyeverywhere I turned, but sometimes, and mostly rarely, at night Ifelt like a fraud for wanting to give up and lurch back to crime.“The philosopher Wittgenstein wrote about spiritual struggle thatsometimes he felt like a man glimpsed through a window in an unseenDavid Philips and mentee Bentley WilsonJoe Loya, Lynn Mawhorter and Vicki BroachYoginee Braslaw and mentee Dorenda WilliamsCarol Greene and mentee Shelena Harrisstorm, appearing to walk quite normally,but in fact keeping his balance only withthe greatest exertion. I felt like that. Likethe achievement of turning around my lifewould be hard-won. That didn’t stop thedoubting, though . . . .Riverside Lawyer, July/August 2005 19
“What I couldn’t imagine was how much good willthere is in the world. People were willing to give meanother chance. Family embraced me when they saw memaking an effort. My new friends confided in me to showme that they trusted me. My wife opened her heart to me.I was dealt with as if I’d always been in the company ofgood folks. I was given a chance to belong to community.Me, who had always been anti-social, raging against theworld. Now the world opened their arms to me and it feltgood to be received.“I tell you that the parolee’s heroism is sometimesdefined by inaction. But I’m not saying that action isn’theroism. In fact, both are true. When the parolee doesn’tact to pick up a needle or gun, they are being heroic. Andwhen the mentor to the parolee picked up their phone andgot in contact with VIP, I’m here to say that their actionwas equally heroic.“You humble mentors may think you are merely takingthe parolee out to dinner, or to a movie, or helpingthem get their driver’s license, or whatever. But what youare really doing is creating an occasion for the paroleeto live another moment on this side of taboo. You arecreating the occasion for the notions of decency and communityto take hold of the parolee’s imagination. You arecreating the occasion for both sides of that new friendshipto be heroic in a world that doesn’t always seem heroic inthis modern age.“ . . . the human heart is resilient. We can forgiveothers and we can forgive ourselves. And this is how communityis formed. By seeing ourselves in the other. If Iwant to be treated good then I should treat you good. Andthat seems to be the ethic of VIP. That the community isbetter served when we serve the community. And servingthe community is knowing that there is a vulnerablepopulation on the margins of society and you move toincorporate them into the center of things. And the centercan hold us all.”If you would like to serve the community as a VIPmentor, please call the program director, Judy Davis, at(951) 782-4814 for information.Joe Loya is an essayist, playwright, andcontributing editor at the Pacific NewsService. His opinion pieces have appearedin the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, theWashington Post, and other national newspapers.He frequently comments on politics,religion, criminal justice issues, andother cultural events.For more information about Mr. Loya or his book, goto www.joeloya.com.Vicki Broach is a Riverside attorney and chair of the Riversideadvisory board for VIP Mentors.20 Riverside Lawyer, July/August 2005
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Page 7 and 8: WHAT DOES ONE CONSIDER A TRAGEDY?By
Page 9: OPPOSING COUNSEL: RODRIC A. PACHECO
Page 12 and 13: BENCH TO BARThe Honorable Sharon Wa
Page 14 and 15: LITIGATION UPDATEby Mark A. MellorH
Page 16 and 17: LOST IN CYBERSPACEserver from Outlo
Page 18 and 19: Supreme Court Justice O'Connor andJ
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Page 24 and 25: OSWALD PARADA - RECIPIENT OF THE DE
Page 26 and 27: What Does One Consider Tragedy? (co
Page 28 and 29: were tired. They wanted to leave. A

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