Tag: Looking for Matthew

Matthew Part VI: What is Justice Epilogue

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Portrait of Matthew Avery Solomon

On January 31, 2019, Anthony Ginez, the Mitigator for Community Resources Initiative, who is working on Luis Rojas’ case with defense attorney Alexandria McClure and Harriet, the CRI videographer, came to Portland to interview me. They had interviewed members of Luis’ family and they wanted to talk with me again. They were making a presentation for the Federal Department of Justice, explaining why the death penalty was not appropriate for Luis. During the course of the afternoon, as Anthony and Harriet posed questions to me about my relationship with Matthew, I was forced to think about our entire history, about the actual limits of our connection when he was alive and how his murder and my sense that I was actually, quite literally, responsible for his death, allowed me to become aware of how centrally important Matt had become to my entire life. You might say that Matt’s murder, the… Continue reading

Matthew Part III: We Are Not Innocent

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“Your grandmother was not teaching me how to behave in class. She was teaching me how to ruthlessly interrogate the subject that elicited the most sympathy and rationalization—myself. Here was the lesson: I was not an innocent.”                                                  –Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Between the World and Me,” 2015 By the time Matthew was murdered in 2008 I had been “ruthlessly” interrogating myself for thirteen years. I am not entirely sure how I came to this excruciating effort by which I had gradually come to know myself—to know that “I was not an innocent”— to accept responsibility for the harm I had done to those I had thought to love. But three days after the murder, I awoke and for a precious moment or two I had forgotten that Matt was dead. After the realization that he was gone hit me, as I lay in a liminal state—half-awake/half-asleep—I saw that I had… Continue reading

Matthew Part II: The nature of being human

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An unexamined life is not worth livingSocrates – 399 B.C. Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.Ludwig Wittgenstein – 1938 (This is a continuation of “Matthew Part I: What is Justice.”  Looking for Matthew, a book of poems by Bill Denham written about his response to Matthew’s death was published by Apocryphile Press in Berkeley, CA in 2012. “O Felix culpa! O light from darkness” was included in this book.) All three defense attorneys responded positively to my inquiry, expressing sorrow for my loss. I thanked them for that expression but stated my current and long-time desire to explore ways to turn this tragic mistake into something positive. I have sent each of them copies of Looking for Matthew. I have been counseled that the pace of such litigation is glacial, at best, and that the capital charges—the death penalty—in the indictment, may never be sought. Regardless, I am… Continue reading