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On Citizenship
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to speak to you all tonight. I feel so very privileged to be here with all of you. I thought this would be a fairly straightforward task – reflecting on our time together over the last ten months – highlighting perhaps a few of the most memorable experiences we shared – East Greenwich in a snowstorm, Woonsocket in a blizzard, Block Island in dense fog – perhaps recounting some amusing anecdotes that poked gentle fun at some among us. But what kept coming to me, in sharp and often painful focus, were two images that had no direct connection to the LRI program at all, yet shaped and foregrounded these months – the small makeshift memorial for Det. Sgt. James Allen on the front lawn of the Providence Public Safety Complex, and the image of Esteban Carpio in his first court appearance.
These two images, and the public discourse that followed, tell a story more poignantly and more hauntingly than anything that I can tell you about the journey we’ve taken together. They tell a story about RI – about courage and duty, about desperation and illness. The range of our capacities as human begins are captured in these images – our abilities to love, to hate, to revere, to despise, to trust too easily, to fear too readily.
Before those awful moments last spring, we shared little bits of ourselves. With pride and nostalgia, we revealed parts of our identities – prized possessions brought from distant places, cherished photographs yellowed with age, bittersweet memories of love and of loss. We debated public vs. private health care coverage, we deconstructed the complex language of pension reform. We passionately defended arts programs in the schools in the face of draconian budget cuts. The killing of Det. Sgt. James Allen, and the events that followed, compelled us to reflect in a new way about why we were here, about what this program could teach us. About what we could learn from each other.
What does it mean to be a citizen? A leader? What does it mean to serve?
Not long after Det. Sgt. Allen was killed, we found ourselves at the ACI. In a small classroom, we listened intently as an inmate spoke – as calmly and as self-reflectively as I am speaking with you now – about his life in prison. About the crimes he committed – among them, the taking of another man’s life – and the way he found meaning in his daily routine. I rode back to the building we started in, behind the steel door of what can only be described as a transport cage, and I thought about what it means to have a civil society. What do we learn from the people we keep in cages? What do we learn from the children who are born behind bars?
How rigorously do we interrogate our own biases? How quick are we to judge what we do not understand?
After the first few weeks following the shooting of Det. Sgt. Allen, Estaban Carpio became somewhat less of a prominent media figure. In our collective memory, he occupies a dark corner, and embodies all that we know about fear and violence.
What is the legacy we will leave as a class? As a state? As a nation? How will we explain our world to our children and to our children’s children?
Tomorrow morning, when we awaken, we will no longer need to carve out our monthly Wednesdays to come together as a group and dissect a list of complicated issues over coffee and catered lunches. But what is it that we will take with us from here?
What I would like to leave you with is this: Our year together may be drawing to a close, but our work is just beginning. As a group, our journey has been a strange and beautiful one, characterized not only by our session days, but by the events of our lives as Rhode Islanders – from moments of haunting sadness, collective grief, and bursts of unexpected violence to expressions of deep and powerful optimism, unfettered hope, and surprising abandon. Let us take with us our passions. Our outrages and our joys. Our humility and our courage. Our hopes and our fears. Our fondest wishes for each other and for the future of our state.
If we are to thrive as a community, as a society, as a nation, we will do so only with each other and only to the extent that we continue to relentlessly explore the complexities and unanswerable questions that a civil society bears.
It has been a great honor to share these last months with all of you. Let us go together, and embrace the coming days with conviction, grace, and fortitude.
Thank you.
Written by Mary-Kim Arnold (LRI '05). Delivered at 2005 Alpha II Leadership Rhode Island Commencement
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