Integrity Forged in Cages
Chris Hedges
Truthdig
Chris Hedges gave this talk to 27 graduating students who were formerly
incarcerated-several of whom he taught in prison-and their families at
Rutgers University on Friday. The ceremony was held by the Mountainview
Program at Rutgers, which helps students complete their degrees at Rutgers
after they take college courses inside prisons through the New Jersey
Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons Consortium (NJ-STEP)
program.
My fellow college graduates: Integrity is not an inherited trait. It is not
conferred by privilege or status or wealth. It cannot be bequeathed by elite
schools or institutions. It is not a product of birth or race or gender.
Integrity is not a pedigree or a brand. Integrity is earned. Integrity is
determined not by what we do in life, but what we do with what life gives
us. It is what we overcome. Integrity is the ability to affirm our dignity
even when the world tells us we are worthless. Integrity is forged in pain
and suffering, loss and tragedy. It is forged in the courtrooms where you
were sentenced. It is forged in the shackles you were forced to wear. It is
forged in the cages where you lived, sometimes for decades. It is forged in
the cries of your children, those who lost their mothers or their fathers to
the monstrosity of mass incarceration. It is forged in the heartache of your
parents, your brothers, your sisters, your spouses and your partners.
Integrity is forged by surmounting the hell around you to study in a cramped
and claustrophobic cell for the college degree no one, perhaps not even you,
thought you would ever earn. Integrity is to refuse to become a statistic.
Integrity is to rise up and shout out to an indifferent universe: I AM
SOMEBODY. And today no one can deny who you are, what you have achieved and
what you have become-college graduates, men and women of integrity who held
on fiercely to your dignity and your capacity to exert your will, and
triumphed.
