Restorative Justice and Arts in Education
This is how we can have nice things...
In the 1980s, activists from Earth First! began sabotaging logging, mining and construction operations throughout the United States, sometimes causing attention-grabbing inconveniences and other times causing injury or death to workers. Forty years later, starting in Europe but now in the United States, anti-fossil fuel protesters have taken to disrupting sports, entertainment and art events, again to win attention for their causes. They are generally non-violent, but their actions risk damage to the objects of humanity’s shared cultural heritage and where they have blocked roads and bridges they have harmed innocent people buy restricting their rights of movement and access to emergency services.
The signature claim of these protesters, which is the signature claim of any extremist, is that their cause is more important than anything anybody else might be doing and so, in the words of Linda Loman, “Attention must be paid.”
In April, Timothy Martin of North Carolina and Joanna Smith of New York vandalized an Edgar Degas sculpture at The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., causing around $2,500 worth of damage and forcing the removal of the sculpture for two weeks. Their attack on the National Gallery also ruined the experiences of other patrons in attendance and forced the curation and care professionals of the museum to clean up their mess. Too often, the impact of these actions of museum workers is overlooked. Now, the paid have been indicted for “Conspiracy to commit and offense against the United States,” and for the actual damage to the art and museum. For shock value, each could face 5 years in federal prison and a quarter million dollar fine.
The Middlebrow adheres to Friedrich Nietzsche’s admonition that we should all be skeptical of those who desire to see other people punished. Never root for people to go to prison. There are better ways.
This looks like a great case for Restorative Justice. Fining Martin and Smith is nearly pointless. The organizations behind these vandals, like Just Stop Oil and Declare Emergency, are well-funded. They collect grass roots donations and support from people like an heiress to the John Paul Getty’s oil fortune Aileen Getty. Even if Martin and Smith get the maximum fine, there is more than enough money available to cover for them and the pair will likely view such patronage as supporting their righteousness.
As for the prison time — you’ll have to be much more hard-hearted than the Middlebrow to want to see these two serve any. They are nuisances, but not severe threats to society. Indeed, they probably face such a prospect only because they chose a target on federal property and a harsh punishments skirts very close to using anti-terrorism laws to punish political dissent.
As Martin and Smith misguidedly attacked the National Gallery, the Scholar son had a dilemma at school. They had been assigned to read a book called The 57 Bus by Dashiki Slater, a nonfiction novelization about the aftermath of an incident on an Oakland city bus where a black teen attempted to set the skirt of a nonbinary teen on fire as a prank — the fire raged surprisingly, the victim suffered serious burns that took many months to heal and what was meant to be juvenile hijinks turned into a serious matter that led to the teen being charged as an adult with potential hate crime penalties and a long penitentiary sentence.
Because the book is written more as a teaching tool than a compelling narrative, the text makes for tough reading. There are long diversions into nonfiction explanations, including the history of the California penal system and the various taxonomies of sexuality and gender that are becoming the norm of American society. It’s all valuable information, sure, but it really bogs down the story and the author has no problem telling the reader what to think, rather than persuading.
Because of this, the Scholar Wife and I joined the Renaissance Son in reading the book out loud, adding entertainment and commentary into the mix, and getting us Son to the end on the teacher’s schedule. One thing Slater accomplishes is that she argue persuasively for restorative, rather than punitive justice. In Slater’s story, the victim wants to forgive and the assailant is remorseful. While there’s no path without prison, they do find one that falls short of the harshest punishments and involves education and amends.
This could work for Martin and Smith — forget prison and fines, if they are willing to apologize to the National Gallery, its patrons and employees and have them work keeping the grounds of the Gallery clean for awhile, or maybe in support of a charities that teach the values of artistic practice and appreciation in our public schools, where such programs are losing public funding in favor of science and math education. Perhaps if Martin and Smith participate in such programs, they’ll learn something about the value of art as well.
The organizations behind this vandalism are trying to raise funds to cover the legal defense and potential penalties. If you know anybody so inclined to donate, please steer them to the Emergency Arts Education Fund of the Children’s Museum of the Arts instead. The CMA’s fund supports full year trust residencies in public schools, so that students will have access to professional mentorships, field trips to galleries and museums, art classes for schools that lack programs, and public exhibitions for student artists. With programs like those, Martin and Smith might have grown up to become more focused and relevant activists.