Why,
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo asked, when he met with Judith Clark at Bedford Hills
women's prison, where she had been detained for decades, had she
participated in the 1981 Brink's robbery that left two cops and one security
guard dead? What drove her, he wanted to know. The Vietnam War was over, wasn't
it, he might have been thinking, a war that drove people of her generation
to crazy acts and expectations.
"Were
you on drugs?" he asked.
"No,"
she replied. "I was on politics."
Well
put.
Politics
of a certain kind can be the hardest drug, and not the easiest to kick, even
when the events that had generated and seemingly justified the world view were
no more.
Cuomo
was genuinely curious. And so she talked about, "about how I understood
that the groupthink and zealotry and internalized loyalty had sapped me of my
own moral compass."
Clark's
transformation in prison, where she had been since 1981, had come to his
attention, which was he why he visited her.
According
to the NY Times account, "lawyers, Catholic nuns in prison ministries, a
former chairman of the state parole board, 13 past presidents of the New York
City Bar Association, the former Bedford Hills prison superintendent and Ronnie
Eldridge, [and] a former city councilwoman from Manhattan" spoke up for
her.
People
can change in prison, but not always, necessarily, for the better. She had,
though.
When
she learned about the attacks on 9/11 she wrote"
"I
dread having to claim kindredness with those who perpetrated the carnage of
Sept. 11, 2001. But my shame and remorse do not diminish my responsibility to
examine the long, knotted thread that connects my actions with the recent
attacks.
In
this brave, smart statement she admits that she was once susceptible to the
kind of fanaticism that binds together such apparently disparate things as the
Brinks Robbery and 9/11.
Before
you can be free of an addiction you have at the very least to be able to name
it. Not everyone hooked on "politics" has.
Gov.
Cuomo, after talking to Judy Clark, reduced her 75-year sentence to 35 years. That
does not mean she will be granted parole in 2017 but at least she will be
eligible.
The
interaction between Andrew Cuomo and Judy Clark brings credit to both.
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