Last week Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton – the highest ranking law enforcement official in the 2nd largest state in the country – was acquitted of impeachment charges by the Texas State Senate after he had been impeached by the Texas House, which included 60 Republican votes against him. To say that questions remain as to Paxton’s honesty and morality would be the understatement of the century. Paxton is as corrupt as Texas is hot.
Paxton was accused of granting contracts and favors to a political supporter and friend, Nate Paul in exchange for Paul keeping silent about an affair Paxton had with a woman. Oh, by the way, Paxton’s wife is a State Senator who was sitting mere feet away during all of the slimy testimony being offered. Yeah, this is gross. But as someone who spent 20 years in Texas, it’s Texas politics!
And those testifying against Paxton were not a bunch of tree-hugging, keep-Austin-weird, anti-gun, pro-choice liberals either. Far from it. The list of witnesses against Paxton included his own Chief of Staff and a man named Jeff Mateer who was once an assistant Attorney General under Paxton. If Mateer’s name rings any bells as it did for me, it is because he was once nominated for a judgeship by the trump administration in 2017. His name was thankfully withdrawn when it became known that he was a speaker at a conference where the person headlining it called for “homosexuals to be put to death” and he himself is in favor of conversion therapy for gay people and he also called transgender people “a part of Satan’s plan.” When you embrace every far right, wackadoo political theory out there and even Mateer turns on you, you know you have drifted afield.
But even with the “star-studded” list of witnesses testifying against someone everyone in the state of Texas knows is deeply corrupted, Paxton was acquitted after people like Lt. Governor Dan Patrick. Funny, I didn’t hear charges of a two-tier justice system being levied against Republican State Senators by those who associated themselves with the MAGA movement.
Reading about this gross miscarriage of justice in Texas made me think about the event we had here at the Festival Center last Thursday. The event was called 50 Years of Failure: Reimagining Public Safety. During Lent, earlier this year, we asked a small group of pastors, theologians, and activists to use the lectionary passages for each week and to look at the criminal justice system as we acknowledged the last 50 years of mass incarceration that was largely initiated through policies of the Nixon administration. We called it 50 Years of Failure and if you haven’t read the reflections I urge you to. They are powerful and challenging. Without engineering it on our end, every writer we asked to reflect on the criminal justice system these last 50 years came to the same conclusion: our criminal justice system is an unmitigated disaster, steeped in racism and classism.
On Thursday we brought together 2 of the writers, along with someone who had spent 27 years in prison and 2 experts on the criminal justice system and we asked them this question:
Considering that for the last 50 years we have sought to preserve public safety through implementing tough on crime sentences and pouring billions of dollars into the militarization of the police, and this approach has not made us safer, what kind of justice system do you envision?
The reflections of all members of the panel were intense, enlightening, and transformative. We wanted to do more than merely throw stones. We wanted to unleash the power of dreaming of a new system; a system that heals and repairs, that holds accountable and restores. It was truly a powerful evening and I am still reflecting on what was said and the spirit of renewal it unleashed.
We need more evenings like this (and we will have another on October 24!). We need to no longer allow shallow political realities to restrain our hopes and dreams for a system that has, for far too long, devastated and unjustly held communities and individuals captive. My prayer is that as followers of Jesus we take seriously what Jesus announced for himself and all who follow him in Luke 4:18 when he proclaimed that the Spirit was leading him to “proclaim freedom for the prisoners.” And to do so we must give ourselves the freedom to dream and hope. That is what we did Thursday and will continue to do so.
So, when I hear people talk about a “two-tiered system of justice” as Republicans seem suddenly so interested in doing, I immediately want to agree and shout to the heavens, “AMEN!!!” But when I see the speakers proclaiming it I know they are gaslighting. Republicans yelling about a two-tiered justice system is just yet another truth that has been twisted and colonized to become a tool steeped in racism and classism. Kind of like our current criminal justice system.
