The Violence of Institutions

It affects us all

My late sister’s son is a poster child for cultural and social systems’ failure. He was a sparkling, funny, beautiful little boy. In the early years of his life my sister was as stable and functional as she’d ever been. Then a car accident left her with serious back injuries and pain. Thus began her and her husband’s opioid addiction and mental illness challenges which eventually killed her, disabled her husband, and seriously damaged both their children.

My nephew lived in foster care for a time and I became a certified foster parent so I could bring him to live with me. He was 16 and already well into addiction and dysfunction. I couldn’t handle or help him and made the heartbreaking decision to send him back to Oklahoma Department of Human Services. While there he got into a sexual relationship with an older DHS case worker. She got pregnant the night he aged-out of the boys’ home facility and she took him home.

He was a hard worker and managed to get various jobs but soon the state of Oklahoma began garnishing his wages for child support demanded by the former DHS worker who’d had sex with him while he was a minor in her care. The garnishment was so large that he was, once again, in deep poverty. That combined with drug use plagued him and he started stealing. He did a few stints of time in Oklahoma county jails. Then he was arrested on more serious theft charges and sentenced to prison but with a deferred sentence after some jail time if he stayed out of legal trouble.

I worked with various Oklahoma agencies to have it arranged that he would be released into a treatment facility rather than prison. During the intake process he was required to fill out a medical history questionnaire including questions about mental health. He answered honestly that he had been previously diagnosed with bi-polar disease. The treatment facility rejected him due to a policy of not admitting people with a history of mental illness.

So he was sent to prison, some of the time in for-profit prisons, which are themselves completely criminal. My nephew stayed out of trouble and once he was eligible to be moved from the privately-run to a lower security facility, I had to fight for nine months and take it all the way to the top of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections for the transfer to take place. For-profit prisons make their money on the people they warehouse. Those who have no outside advocate have almost no chance.

I supported my nephew throughout the sentence. He completed a GED and electrician’s apprenticeship. Then, ten years later, on a freezing morning, in desolate western Oklahoma five miles from the nearest small town, I was there to pick him up when he got released. That intense experience is a whole story unto itself, but the relevance to this essay is that when he came through the last set of internal prison gates, they handed him a cardboard box containing all his belongings (just correspondence) and handed me a blue folder that on the front had his name and the line, “Released to the Street.”

The barriers faced by all the people “Released to the Street” are unimaginable for those who haven’t experienced or at least witnessed them. My nephew had never used email, nor had to fill out online forms. He’d never been in a car with push-button ignition. He had severe PTSD and cripplingly low self-esteem.

Despite it all, he was determined and hard working. We set about getting him official identification, which I’ll come back to below. I got him a laptop and showed him how to do emails and online job applications. Many, many jobs were closed to him because of his criminal record, but within a couple weeks he had landed a job through a temp agency and then a mattress company. I drove him back and forth while he saved money to get his own vehicle. Once when I had to go out of town on a business trip, he walked two miles through three-foot deep snow getting back and forth from his job.

Not long after, the State of Oklahoma began garnishing his check for the approximately $40,000 he owed for child support plus interest -- child support and interest had kept piling up while he was in prison. He worked two jobs and was able to save enough to buy a good used car and after many months a very nice large travel trailer. We set up electricity and water on my side lot and for the first two years, though it was not an easy haul for either of us, he made steady progress.

Sadly, by this time in his life chaos had become the familiar environment and my nephew brought both drugs and his utterly destructive father back into his life. I set boundaries for myself and my home. About a year ago, he moved his big trailer along with his father out onto BLM land east of town. I tried to tell him it wasn’t a legal or long-lasting option but he wouldn’t listen. I suspect he was running in some pretty unhealthy crowds by this time.

Six months ago somebody hooked up to his trailer containing everything he owned, including his ID, and pulled it away. There is no trace of it.

Though I won’t get too personally, directly involved until he gets some treatment for drug and mental health issues, I did offer to help him get his ID, which he needs to get a job. In order to get a replacement driver’s license you have to have an original certified birth certificate. In order to get a replacement birth certificate you have to have a valid driver’s license or other form of official state ID. I have a perfect photo copy of the official birth certificate I got for him less than a year ago but neither the county records department nor the Department of Motor Vehicles will accept the copy. The county records department would allow me to order the birth certificate if my nephew went online and filled out an authorized representative form. Currently, he doesn’t even have a cell phone let alone a computer. The fees for the identification documents are also prohibitive to someone struggling to afford food.

I am in no way suggesting my nephew is not responsible for his own choices and the messes he has made and is making. I am not suggesting he did not deserve correction for the real crimes he committed. In truth, this loved-one has the most powerful attachment to victim-mentality I have ever experienced, an exact replica of what his parents demonstrated. He is combative, and so-far, unwilling to do the deep inner work that will be necessary to turn his life around. However, he was set up for failure by his parents and kept in a cycle of poverty, rejection, and hardship by systems and institutions.

I am reminded of remarks by Robert F. Kennedy. Here is an excerpt:

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of other human beings. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some [who] accuse others of rioting and inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression breeds retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference, inaction and decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man amongst other men. And this too afflicts us all.

America is in the midst of a houselessness crisis, an opioid addiction crisis, a crisis of mass-incarceration, a crisis of economic despair. Millions of us are facing challenges very similar to what my nephew is facing. Well-established but obsolete systems and institutions are driving this social meta-crisis.

The short list of institutions that inflicted violence on my loved-one include the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, the prison-industrial system, the King County Washington records department, the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles, and the punitive US cultural system that holds a person’s criminal record against them for life even after though they’ve served out their sentence. On top of this our gross disinvestment in mental health and addiction services greatly exacerbated the problems of my sister and both of her children. Finally, ours is a brutal economic system -- once you land in poverty, it is very hard to climb out of it.

A couple months ago my nephew made a great point. Frustrated by how hard it is to get a replacement driver’s license he said, “Shit, they’ve got all my fingerprints in the system. Why can’t they just use those to confirm my ID?” I hadn’t even thought of that, but why not? Of course, the incarceration systems don’t communicate or share records with Departments of Motor Vehicles systems. Why not?

My nephew also said, in despair over the challenges faced by people trying to reenter society post-prison, “If they’re not going to let us in, why do they let us out?”

The violence of institutions plays out in our personal lives and in our collective experience as was recently evidenced by the power of the institution of Big Oil in the latest UN global climate change talks. Here’s a link to a recent piece on those developments.

Institutions, and cultural norms, are human-made constructs. We invented them, which means we can reinvent them to better meet our current needs. If we don’t they’ll continue to inflict violence and we all, whether we are overtly aware of it or not, will continue to pay the price.

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Upcoming Classes

Building on the violence of institutions theme, I will be offering two online classes beginning in January that offer spiritual perspectives quite different from conventional, dogmatic, dualistic religious institutions.

New Thought Ancient Wisdom – History of New Thought class

The History of New Thought & Unity explores the origin and development of the ideas, beliefs and practices that characterize the New Thought movement. Particular attention is placed on the history and development of Unity.

Classes will be held Tuesdays, Jan. 16, 23, 30, Feb. 6, 13, 20 2024, 11am — 12:30pm Pacific Time.

Online via ZOOM

We’ll study the revolutionary teachings and philosophy of key thinkers like Emma Curtis Hopkins, Eric Butterworth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Myrtle and Charles Fillmore and many others.

Register at https://www.cylviahayes.net/product/new-thought-ancient-wisdom-history-of-new-thought-class/

This is a required class for Unity ministerial students but is open to all spiritual seekers.

Metaphysics 3 class

This Metaphysics 3 course explores some of the more complex metaphysical concepts such as the levels and functions of consciousness, how to gain dominion over our thoughts and feelings, concepts of the “Word”, Logos, and the 12 primary spiritual powers.

Classes will take place Mondays, Jan, 15, 22, 29, Feb. 5, 12, 19, 2024, 4pm to 5:30pm Pacific time.

Online via Zoom.

Register at -- https://www.cylviahayes.net/product/metaphysics-3-class/

This class is a required course for Unity ministerial students but is open to all spiritual seekers.

And finally, even the Jedi masters noted that institutions and dogma, including Jedi dogma, must at times be toppled. Here is a link to my recent Metaphysics of Star Wars part 2 talk.