| John Choi is actively making justice better for the economically disadvantaged. The justice system is usually a Catch-22 system where people who can't pay are caught in downward spiral. The lack of ability to pay fines causes them to lose driving privileges and to lose access to jobs, which further reduces their ability to pay the fines. John Choi set up the driver diversion program so people can still drive while making payments.
John Choi is actively making justice better for different racial groups and different cultural groups. My cultural norm is treat the police with extreme courtesy. In some cultures, defending one's friends and one's family, even in the case of police, is considered the honorable way to be. Police can take that defense and make it a charge of Obstruction of Legal Process, a catch all charge. John Choi worked on actively changing the processes and procedures of both the police and his office to reduce the number of Obstruction of Legal Process charges from 568 in 2006 to 399 in 2008, a 30% improvement. John Choi even monitored the other catch all charge of Disorderly Conduct to ensure that it stayed constant. This is the real hard work of making government better.
John Choi is actively developing and using local and national foreclosure strategies to put pressure on corporations to treat people better in foreclosures and to recycle vacant houses faster. He is working with the "Multi-City Working Group on Foreclosures," a coalition of 20 cities acting together to gain political power and to share legal strategies that are working.
John Choi has had strong political pressure to hurry up the processing of cases from Republican National convention. John Choi has explained that it would not be fair to all the other cases in his office, for these cases to be given priority. And indeed he has totally resisted pressure to change his standards or processes for Republican National convention cases. This is a unique resistance to political pressure. For once an act being done at a political event is being treated the same as an act at a sporting event.
Normally cities self insure when it involves police actions, which the recent stories about Minneapolis payouts demonstrate. John Choi recommended and instituted the purchase of a $10 million insurance policy for the Republican National Convention. While I and others did see this act as giving more encouragement to police misconduct, I also must admit that the history of security events makes this an eminently practical decision that will save St Paul a huge amount of money.
Both before and after the Republican National Convention, John Choi has been open to the public and the press, including citizen journalists like me. John Choi was part of the six community meetings before the convention. I have had two interviews with John Choi since the convention. Last night, I saw John Choi speak before the "St Paul Citizens for Justice" group, that had many tough questions for him. Normally I would expect a politician to stay in a safe shell away from a possible critical group. John Choi spoke from the heart in an open way that really impressed this group and frankly healed relationships and trust.
The other three candidates for Ramsey county attorney are all excellent lawyers, with demonstrated community helping projects that are impressive. All the other candidates did speak eloquently of defending civil rights and "one justice for all". Yet when questioned, all of the other candidates admitted that he or she had not taken any political leadership on the biggest issue before Ramsey county attorney's office this year - the Republican National Convention. Each one admitted that he or she had not given a speech nor even written a letter-to-the-editor about a Republican National Convention issue before he or she started campaigning. I find that to be an incredible lack of courage and leadership at time when our community needed such leadership. So John Choi stands out for actually having led in this difficult time, when his actions were highly critiqued, while all the other candidates stayed safely quiet.
In my interview with John Choi, he spoke of how bringing victims, police, offenders and all of the players together in a open hearted sharing of views transforms the people involved and transforms the community. This is restorative justice. Indeed John Choi says that his restorative justice experiences have made him more fully aware how life transforming an experience with the police and his department can be. As a consequence, John is more committed to improving the entire process.
I like to test every new idea. So I set out to test the idea of restorative justice. I don't have the same opportunity that John Choi has. So I set out to do a number of one on one interviews that focused more on dialog and discussion instead of just information gathering. In restorative justice, the topics are emotionally charged so I chose an emotional subject for me, the Republican National Convention. I have reported these discussions in articles here before, but this time I want to focus on the changes that happened to me - the transformational aspects of this type of dialog.
I talked with Nigel Parry in a phone interview and in a long note discussion. I admire Nigel Parry because of his extraordinary collection of Republican National Convention documents. I was surprised by some of directions and judgments of Nigel Parry's thinking that was not revealed by his reporting. Nigel Parry challenged the way that I report, since I was reporting the flow of the conversation more than the "he said, she said" style of reporting. That type of reporting would feel to me in this context as more of "gotcha" reporting that is polarizing, that fixes people in place instead displaying the evolution of conversational change. It was a very good point and still has me contemplating what kind of reporter I am.
Matt Bostrom is the Assistant Chief of the St Paul Police, who had major portion of decision making power at Republican National Convention. To say that I have been critical of police actions at the Republican National Convention is an understatement. So I was surprised that Matt Bostrom did agree to an interview, even allowing me the location of my favorite coffee shop. Despite my best intentions, I was at times very contentious, which I am still apologizing for. However, Matt Bostrom was very patient and open. So I ended up rethinking all of the decisions from his perspective. While I still could not always agree with decisions, I found that I could respect those decisions. Matt Bostrom was also very open to looking for better ways and being an advocate for change. OK, I even challenged him on this, asking for citations and studies, which he later sent. There is a huge sense of inner relief in me about feeling able to trust the St Paul police again. In spite of myself and to my immense surprise, I now have a deep respect for Matt Bostrom and the work that he does. I trust his leadership at any large event, like the Obama healthcare event that we just had.
The next interview was with Mike McIntee, from the Uptake, a person I have often worked with. Yet this was the first time that I had ever gone beyond work conversations with Mike. Mike was not as affected by the Republican National convention intimidation for he has covered wars. Mike is deeply committed to the government being transparent. His perspectives caused me to think about how I would have judged the Republican National Convention if the intimidation factor had been totally removed? How would I have judged the broken windows and dropped sandbags if that had happened at my local Grand Old Days parade? I felt that my next article was infinitely better for these challenges.
I am not done with the planned interviews, yet even my test in restorative justice has truly changed me and my writing. So I wonder if in some way, we could do restorative justice on whole political communities. OK, I admit this test is way more than most people do before an endorsement. However I wanted to not just blindly assume that something worked.
With this experience, I definitely endorse restorative justice and the restorative justice advocate, John Choi, for Ramsey County attorney. |
I, Grace Kelly, am fully endorsing 
