It took 43 minutes for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to execute Clayton Lockett. Sorry, that figure is wrong. It took fourteen years and 43 minutes for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to execute Clayton Lockett. As if the decade and a half on death row wasn’t cruel and unusual enough, Lockett was administered a cocktail of drugs last Tuesday which can only now be called less-than-lethal. His body writhed in pain, tortured in the most literal sense, before a heart attack put him out of his misery 43 minutes later. To many, this was justice. The death sentence was justice. Death row was justice. Even the botched execution was justice. Lockett had raped and murdered, after all.
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Last April a celebrated Palestinian scholar, Joseph Massad, spoke in the Dana Auditorium. With frequent nods to unnamed academics, Massad waxed poetic about the farce of Jewish heritage, an invention of the 19th Century he claimed. Massad also spoke of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis leaving, like a vile stench in the air, the insinuation that the Holocaust was a Zionist ploy for sympathy, a calculated effort to achieve history’s greatest heist: the State of Israel. Perhaps most telling of the true nature of his Anti-Zionism, however, was this bombshell: “I told you. I was not interested in building peace. Peace will only come after justice is established.” To Massad peace is secondary, a welcome externality, but an externality nonetheless.
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beyond the green wants the progressive majority to know that social justice isn’t about them. Social justice is about fighting “Racism, Classism, Sexism, and many other isms.” Surely socialism and atheism are on the chopping block next, but I digress. beyond the green might be the most simultaneously captivating and divisive force to hit Middlebury since the Dalai Lama Welcoming Committee. A platform that “[rejects] ... the dominant Middlebury narrative,” beyond the green “seeks to use writing as a way to support and ultimately achieve structural and institutional change.”
Since its inception one month ago beyond the green has proved a consistent source of alternative literature; the stories and essays published thus far have each provided a compelling, if also controversial, perspective on life at Middlebury. What many of the pieces boil down to, however, can be found in the collective’s mission statement: “We hope that the articles we publish encourage personal reflection and discussion offline, and foster connections between those who identify with them.” Between those who identify with them. But what about everyone else?
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There has always been a tension between peace and justice. Where the former is a condition the latter is a response. Justice is rooted in the past. It is reactive, a Newtonian counterbalance to ills already committed. Peace, on the other hand, is a thing of the future. It is something for which to strive, a gift for future generations. That is not to say that justice is a cause absent purpose. Indeed, justice can be the best way to achieve peace. However, in such a case justice is no more than a vessel; it acts as a proxy, but like all proxies it is imperfect, an approximation at best. Ideally, to fight for justice would be to fight for peace, but too often it seems that justice is sought as an end, not a means.
Did the execution of Clayton Lockett bring any greater peace to our country? Does any execution, for that matter? Of course not. There are two arguments for capital punishment: first, the notion of an eye for an eye; and, second, the idea that the cost of keeping such criminals alive is too great for taxpayers to bear. The latter argument falls short in that there is no cost to life, it is priceless. The former, on the other hand, is brutal and outdated. It stands the test of crude logic but serves no real or moral purpose. Similarly, Joseph Massad’s Anti-Zionism seeks no end but a historical U-turn. In his eyes the creation of Israel was an injustice; justice, therefore, would be its undoing. beyond the green falls victim to this line of thinking as well. The repeated demand that people of privilege “take a seat” achieves no end but stagnancy. Call it justice if you must, but why bother?
While I concede that where there is injustice there cannot be peace, the principle does not hold in reverse. Peace is not the success of some but the collective and enduring union of all. The so-called justice of modern activism rejects this just as it rejects those who do not meet the standards for its membership. Certainly, it is essential that we acknowledge the faults of our past in recognition of how they’ve shaped the present, but we must not let this recognition engender further animosity. Such sentiment fuels activism for the sake of activism, realizing no true change. It cuts people off and dictates terms of discourse all in the name of justice. At the end of the day, the dichotomy is clear: justice cares about who speaks; peace cares about what is said. Choose peace.
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