Heidenescher: Marching down to freedom land

If anybody ever said college students can’t make a difference, tell them they are damn wrong.

I’m on my way to Washington DC for a conference while I’m told this. During the eight-hour ride there this message resonates with me. Could I — a meager English major with a passion for justice — make a difference? I mean, I hope so.

My group, a collection of other college students from Ohio, and I arrive in the nation’s capital — a little groggy and cramped, but nevertheless ready to do something, anything.

The conference’s goal is to educate and motivate its attendees to respond against systems of mass incarceration in the U.S. and the world. Sound intimidating? I thought so too, but I gave it as much attention as I could, without any coffee.

Our group takes our seats in the lavish crystal ballroom of the convention center eager to be jolted into action. The speaker, a preacher who spent much of her time at Ferguson, Missouri in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s death, walks onto the stage.

She opens in song — a song sung during the Civil Rights era, an era she argues is not over.

“Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, I’m gonna keep on a-walkin’, keep on a-talkin’, marchin’ down to freedom land,” she sings.

Not long into her speech, I begin weeping. Weeping because I can see the issue, it is clear, large and dark. Mass incarceration isn’t just the people in prison, its every single person in chains as a result of our punitive sense of justice and our collective apathy. This issue encompasses race, class, gender and many other weapons of division. It’s as if the motto is ‘divide and imprison.’

I’m livid. I’m sad. I’m guilty. I’m distraught. How could I not see this? How could I not care? What on earth have we done?

The message ends and my group of friends start debriefing. Overwhelmingly they agree that they now feel ‘white guilt’ — a result of feeling bad for racial tension just because of being white.

I feel not only white guilt, but I feel guilty for all of my privileges, because face it: as a white college student in Ohio, I am privileged. It has taken me a long time to come to this realization, but I finally have.

My chain is ignorance, and I fully intend to break those chains so I can help others who are chained for a number of unjust reasons.

My new objective for the conference is to learn everything I can.

Throughout the conference my group and I continue to mill about, collecting pamphlets, going to workshops and listening to speakers. I’m trying to soak up as much information as I can. I tell them it is imperative if we want anyone to be free.

So we learn. We learn that immigration is another way of punishing people unfairly in order to fill bed quotas in detention centers. We learn that Native Americans have been unfairly reduced and imprisoned by American culture, surrounded on all sides in reservations. We learn that Gaza is the global example of an entire nation being imprisoned, colonized and arrested.

After each workshop, my understanding increases. I expand these lessons to the bigger picture; I think about what I can do to help.

My friend and I spoke about the workshop on Gaza and I mention that at the University of Toledo, there is a campaign that calls for the divestment of companies that profit in Israeli territories in Palestine. A passerby overhears and butts in, “A divestment is a bunch of crap.”

I ignore this, for the safety of that passerby. I might’ve said some very choice words not appropriate for the conference setting.

This is why: I realize that UTDivest isn’t a Palestinian-Israeli issue, it’s a human issue. The Israeli government is consciously colonizing the West Bank and knowingly arresting the development of the Gaza Strip. As a human being, I want this to stop. It’s very clear to see how events like this have played out in history. Need I remind people about the colonization of the Americas or Africa?

With the power in the privilege I have realized, I can use that power for something other than getting what I want. I can work to get others what they want — freedom.

The greatest power I have are words and consumerism. As a college student majoring in English, I have some say in what I pay for and what I write about.

From the lobby of this convention center I forever choose to write about what is right and spend my money on what is not wrong. I would prefer if my university did not invest money on companies that perpetuate crimes against humanity.

So, in addition to our consumer voice, my group marches on Capitol Hill to use our actual voices. We meet with our representatives and senators in Congress. We urge them to pass legislation that would end mandatory minimum sentencing and end immigration detention center bed quotas. Our voices were being heard.

After five hours of sleep, four cups of coffee, countless meetings on a Monday morning, my voice still echoed in those long marble hallways.

Someone had to have heard. Because we weren’t just a-talkin’ and we weren’t just a-walkin’, we were marching, marching down to freedom land.

And I don’t plan to stop now. If you don’t believe college students have a voice, just watch.

Joe Heidenescher is a second-year majoring in English, and he is the associate Community editor for The Independent Collegian.