Three Talking About Justice at Guild Hall
On Aug. 8, there will be a community gathering at Guild Hall in East Hampton for a discussion of a topic of increasing urgency: the state of the American criminal justice system and issues surrounding mass incarceration. According to an advocacy group called the Prison Policy Initiative, some 2.3 million people in the United States are currently incarcerated, and, by all accounts, an American’s chances of being incarcerated for a given crime differ radically according to the color of their skin as well as their economic background.
Co-hosted by Guild Hall and East, The Star’s magazine, the evening will be led by Zachary Lazar, a novelist who lives part time in North Sea; Sarah Koenig, a reporter and podcast pioneer who grew up in Sagaponack, and Garnette Cadogan, a scholar who writes about race, urban life, and the promise of plurality in American cities.
Tickets to the event, which starts at 8 p.m., are free, as the organizers hope to draw in as many people as possible and create an atmosphere in which diverse perspectives are openly shared. Community leaders from all over the East End have been invited. “We’ve reached out to church groups, schools, politicians, people from Shinnecock Indian Nation, and Black Lives Matter organizers,” said Bess Rattray, East’s editor. “The point is to bring people together to talk about an issue that matters to all of us, regardless of which political party we belong to.”
Each of the illustrious trio leading the talk has worked on or written about things related to criminal justice. Mr. Lazar, who teaches at Tulane University, has published several books on topics related to incarceration and is an active advocate for arts programming in prisons. Ms. Koenig, who became a household name with the “Serial” podcast, helped to bring problems in the justice system to a nationwide audience with its landmark first season in 2014. And Mr. Cadogan, a Martin Luther King Jr. visiting scholar at M.I.T., brings his expertise as a researcher and essayist whose work explores the vitality and inequality of cities.
“I am a great admirer of the work of the three moderators,” said Andrea Grover, the director of Guild Hall. “Having them all together and in conversation with the community will be a high point of our summer.”
The format for the conversation is expected to be a combination of short presentations (both audio recordings and live readings), audience questions, and a moderated discussion. It is being called “Vengeance: A Community Conversation,” borrowing its title from that of Mr. Lazar’s latest novel, “Vengeance,” a hybrid of fiction and nonfiction that tells the story of man serving a life sentence at Louisiana State Penitentiary, the largest maximum security prison in the United States.
“The novel takes a story about mass incarceration and racism that people have heard about or read about in the news and gives a more intimate portrait of what that really looks like for one person,” Mr. Lazar said. The book — which The New Yorker called “truer than true” — touches on themes of guilt and penance, racial bias, and the punitive nature of incarceration policy. Released this winter to glowing reviews, it has helped to spark a wider national conversation about the problems in our courts and prison system. Mr. Lazar says that he is glad his book can be a catalyst. “I think one of the very first steps our society needs to take in addressing these difficult issues is to face the fear of talking. It might be uncomfortable, but it’s the only way to learn.”
Mass incarceration is a topic likely to inspire passionate feelings, and organizers hope that discussions like these will help to promote action toward positive change.
This event can be seen as part of a larger trend toward issue-focused arts programming at Guild Hall. Over the last few years, the 87-year-old institution has made a proactive shift in its focus, with Ms. Grover and her colleagues prioritizing artists and events that further dialogue around issues of social justice. This summer, for example, their “Thinking Forward” lecture series, presented in partnership with the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center, has included a talk by Khalil Gibran Muhammad, an author and the former director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, who discussed issues of race, class, and marginalization on the East End. In June 2017, a panel of speakers from the Innocence Project gave a presentation on criminal justice reform and wrongful conviction in conjunction with a show of portraits of exonerees by the artist Taryn Simon.
Initiatives like these are helping to redefine the role of art and arts spaces on the South Fork. No longer just a place to see a play or an exhibition of paintings, Guild Hall’s museum and theater are being positioned as a true community center, where people gather to talk about important issues, and even, perhaps, to be inspired to get organized. Ms. Grover sees this as integral to Guild Hall’s mission: “It is our obligation as an institute that was founded as a civic space to be offering a venue for discussions like these.”
Mr. Lazar is particularly hopeful that conversations like these will encourage people to become active locally: “I think that many of the big problems with race and the justice system in America are deeply rooted in our history and will be hard to change. That said, many of these incarceration policies are made on the state level and people can have a serious impact by becoming active in their local communities.”
Mr. Lazar notes that, just last year, grassroots organizers in Louisiana helped to pass a criminal reform bill that aims to reduce the number of people being incarcerated for petty crimes. “It’s not perfect, but it is something.” Thanks to a number of these small efforts, Louisiana no longer has the highest incarceration rate of any state in the union, which it did for a long time. “I think it is number three now,” he said, laughing. “Baby steps.”