Deborah J. Cohan Ph.D. Testimonial

News of Chuck Turner’s arrest came to me at 11:30 am on Friday when I walked into my sociology classroom at the small college where I teach.  My students hesitated telling me, knowing that I consider Chuck an old and dear friend. They have come to know and like him, too, because in September, he visited my classes as a guest speaker, talking about oppression, movements for social justice, and ways we can re-imagine our thinking for our future in spite of, and because of, a Constitution that was written to serve the needs of white male property owners.  My students found him mesmerizing and mainly because here in front of them was an elected public official excited to meet them in a down to earth dialogue about what mattered in their lives; at that time, much of what mattered to them related to the national election, and he eagerly worked with them to refine their thinking and sharpen their analysis.

Some students in my class are originally from District 7 and know Chuck from the community and claimed they have always looked up to him.  A Black woman in my class from a different part of Boston, thanked him for the chance to hear from an extremely intelligent and articulate Black man, a comment I can’t get out my head as it reveals so much of what is structurally broken in this society, for all people.

In the news coverage of Chuck and his work history, one site of his activism and organizing that is not mentioned is his work to end violence against women.  For four years, in the mid to late 90’s, I had the great privilege of co-facilitating weekly groups for abusive men with Chuck.  I don’t think I have ever worked so closely with someone so willing to take such enormous personal risks for social justice.  The ultimate lesson in working and learning from Chuck all these years has been that you do it, whatever it is, because it is the right thing to do, because the greater interests of social justice and social change will be served.  At the time we worked together, I was in my mid-twenties, a very young woman working with violent men, and Chuck’s fearlessness made me less afraid, more daring, and far more humbled.  We were opposite on nearly every exterior marking there is—gender, race, religion, and age to name a few; but our common interest in the work we were doing and our shared response to the attitudes and actions of violent men with whom we worked, conveyed to me important lessons on the lines that divide us and the ties that truly bind us.

I am left wanting to know more about what happened, more about the context of this story.  If Chuck is found innocent, and I believe he will be, I want to understand why he was targeted. I also want to understand a government that sets people up, manipulates them, traps them, and then arrests them for falling prey to the traps. I wonder how this qualifies us as the land of the free and the home of the brave. And, if he is found guilty, I want all of us to hear his story, to grapple with why he believed this action was the right thing to do in a particular context. If that day comes, I will be filled with more grief than the kind that overwhelms me now. One thing I know for sure is that the suggested punishment would never begin to fit this crime; twenty years imprisonment and a quarter of a million dollars sound like an unusually high price to pay for accepting a $1000 bribe, in an age when serial rapists and murderers do not suffer such consequences.  Two years ago, I invited Chuck to speak to a different class of mine at a large university in the area and he told my class, “Social movements are expressions of the disharmonies occurring in a particular time.  Movements are constantly recurring throughout history.  It’s an ongoing process.  At a time in the future, we may be able to live in a just society.”  I, too, long for that.