SUBTERRANEAN PROCESS
Rothschild, Matthew
EDITOR'S NOTE Matthew Rothschild Subterranean Process I first got interested in juvenile-justice issues through a friend, Peter Rubin. I used to play poker with Peter. During the games, he'd...
...Even as we were editing these stories, he was preparing legislation that would crack down even harder on juveniles...
...by Barbara Kingsolver and Jill Barrett Fein, March 1984...
...And she comes with the most luminous references I've ever seen...
...Hey, Bill, who's running the country...
...That really made an impact on me, as I was a student of his well within thai time period...
...They were twelve- and thirteen-year-old kids who took drugs across the street for someone so they could have enough money to buy a T-shirt or a hamburger...
...I like to think we're giving you facts, arguments, and perspectives that you can carry with you in your lives and work, so that you can then engage your friends and neighbors and colleagues in political dialogue...
...And she's made the most of that power ever since...
...People no longer care about looking at kids as individuals," he told me...
...I still believe in kids," he said...
...Peter died of cancer last summer...
...And I don't kid myself that we affect policy in Washington, D.C., in any direct way...
...Still, I wouldn't be at this desk if I didn't think it was doing some good somehow...
...He decried the trend, in state after state, of lowering the age at which a juvenile can be waived into adult court...
...And so ever since Peter died, I've wanted to bring the issue of juvenile justice to the fore...
...In his off hours, he coached basketball for so-called at-risk kids, and he brought them into his home, gave them clothes, and took care of them in myriad other ways...
...I asked Mike Males (who wrote "In Defense of Teenaged Mothers," in our August 1994 issue) and Managing Editor Ruth Conniff to take on the subject for us, and I hope their reports make a difference, too...
...She says it gave her a sense of "the power of being able to get the word out...
...He was only forty-eight...
...In each individual case, it may be justified...
...During the games, he'd occasionally get calls from clients...
...If it's such a tragedy, why do you keep performing it...
...She is an accomplished poet, who has won several distinguished prizes...
...it's not direct like mounting an electoral campaign or passing a piece of legislation, so its oblique effects are not always obvious...
...You're the guy who signed the draconian crime bill...
...You are...
...sometimes I can't tell—except by some (usually irate or petulant) letters to the editor—whether we're even being read at all...
...They just want to treat them as criminals, and be done with them...
...The drug dealers he represented were not from the Cali Cartel, he said...
...And he saw firsthand how the penalties for drug use, even drug dealing, are way out of proportion...
...He helped them during the day, and helped them at night—not just with legal advice, but with support and mentoring...
...This is a subterranean process of social change...
...The interview with Barbara Kingsolver in this issue, though, is evidence that the process works...
...One person who's not making a difference on this issue is Bill Clinton...
...A couple of months before he died, I talked with him about the crackdown on juveniles that was sweeping Wisconsin and the nation...
...Peter Rubin was not a famous man, but he made a difference...
...I asked him how he could keep going to work even as he was terminally ill...
...He was a public defender, and juveniles were his specialty...
...Often, I'm not aware of what effect The Progressive has on people, Since we're a national magazine, I'm remote from most of our readers...
...Peter loved kids...
...He never gave up on them...
...After reviewing more than 100 applicants, Ruth and I are absolutely convinced that Anne-Marie is the best person for the job...
...And then he has the gal] to say, in People magazine, "We've tried to catch more people, jail more people, and keep them there longer, and it's a tragedy...
...But as a way to run a country, it's a tragedy...
...You're the guy who boasts about making more crimes punishable by death...
...She talks about being a reader of this magazine and then of send ing us an article, which turned out to be the first she ever published (see "Women on the Line...
...You're the guy who signed the bill that penalizes crack offenders at a rate 100 times greater than cocaine offenders...
...This month we welcome Anne-Marie Cusac as our new Associate Editor, A graduate student in English and American literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she specialized in lesbian poetics, feminist theory, gay and lesbian theory, proletarian literature, and women's literature...
...One professor of hers called me up to say that she was the best student he'd had in twenty years...
...Anne-Marie has also worked for CALPIRG, the Sierra Club in Palo Alto, and the Stanford Peace Committee...
Vol. 60 • February 1996 • No. 2
