Ron Bridgeforth Appeal

Mike Miller
442 Vicksburg Street
San Francisco, CA 94114
(415) 648-6894
[email protected]
June, 2012

Dear Friends:

This is a fundraising letter for Ron Bridgeforth, a report on his story and recent trial, a request that you pay tribute to his courage by contributing to his cause, and a note on the contribution I believe Ron will make even as he serves time, during his probation, and certainly when his sentence is complete.  

Let me start with Ron’s story and my connection with him.  I met Ron in 1964; he was a young (17) African-American who became active with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the Bay Area when I was the organization’s regional rep here.  He and I, along with four other people, shared a flat on the edge of San Francisco’s Western Addition.  Ron became involved in the fight against urban renewal, and started working with black high-schoolers.  He then, as did I, felt compelled to join “The Movement” in the Deep South and became a full-time SNCC Field Secretary in Mississippi.  By the mid-1960s, he was swept up in the rage that engulfed many African-Americans, particularly young men who had great hopes that the nonviolent civil rights movement would usher in a new day of justice for blacks in America.

In 1968, Ron was involved in an incident in which he shot at a policeman.  Wounded in the exchange, he was quickly captured, arrested, tried, convicted and released on bail.  Shortly thereafter, Ron appeared at my door: “Mike, I came to say goodbye.”  “Where are you going?” “You don’t want to know.”  He disappeared.  Almost 45 years later we are back in touch. 

In those years, Ron created a new identity, severed connection with everyone from his past—including his family, got married, spent a couple of years in Africa, decided he was an African-American and returned home, had a couple of now-grown sons, and led an exemplary life counseling young people who were headed toward dropping out of school, drugs, gangs, crime and, no doubt, prison.  Most of that time he was in Ann Arbor.

Last year, Ron decided both that he should face the consequences of his earlier act, and that he wanted to reconnect with his family and others from his past.  He called, we talked, I got involved in his defense and am now helping raise funds for him.  In March, he was tried and sent to San Mateo County jail.  

Let me pick up the story with his sentencing and the trial.  It is important to remember that Ron shot at a policeman.  That is not something taken lightly by the legal system; nor should it be.  Any expectation that Ron would be released because he was fully rehabilitated was unrealistic.  Given that prison time was almost certain, the questions were:  How much?  Where? Doing what? 

In her final remarks, San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Lisa Novak noted the severity of Ron’s crime, and cast doubt on some of his testimony; she also acknowledged that he was fully rehabilitated.  She sentenced Ron to one year in jail (likely to become six-to-eight months for “good behavior”), rather than state prison (where he would almost certainly have served a minimum of three-to-five years).  Further, she assigned him to probation in Alameda County, where there is already substantial interest in having him do delinquency prevention work, rather than the more-logical San Mateo County, where he committed his crime, and which is more strict and punitive than Alameda.

Why?  I think there are four parts to the answer. 

First, we were lucky.  I believe the judge took into account what Ron has done with his life for the past 40 years, the extraordinary testimonials to him in 66 letters written on his behalf by former counselees, their parents, his colleagues in Ann Arbor, SNCC associates, and others.  While the judge is not a “liberal,” she isn’t a “prosecutor’s judge” either. 

Second, the community that formed around Ron and his wife Diane was fully present.  A racially, generationally and otherwise mixed group of more than 100 people showed up at 8:00 a.m. on March 23, 2012 to bear witness to the proceedings.  This strong support was the result of a series of house meetings that introduced Ron and his case to potential supporters.  

Not all of us were able to get inside the courtroom.  But our presence must have been felt.  We were a disciplined and orderly group that wanted to see justice done. 

Further, it was during meetings held in Alameda County prior to sentencing that delinquency prevention leaders stepped up to make it known they wanted Ron working with them; this included the County Probation Department.

Third, well known Bay Area defense attorney Paul Harris did an excellent job, not only in the preparation and delivery of the case, but as an architect of the entire defense strategy—a low keyed but emphatic statement, supported by good feature stories in the San Francisco Chronicle(see attached), that Ron should not go to state prison, that he had wide and deep community support, and that he should as quickly as possible be available to do his work with delinquency prone young adults.

Fourth, Ron’s character shone through.  His statement to the court is worth deep consideration, as are his statements to the media and to us.  I hope you will spend some time considering a couple of points he made on which I’d like to share my reflections:

[My action] forces me to ask myself who was I on that night, and what was I doing?  I find myself without defense.  I cannot explain my actions: I cannot justify them.  I had broken every rule that I had been raised with…What had I done?  What had I become?  What was left for me now?  I felt I had betrayed my family, my community and everyone who cared about me.  In that moment of utter confusion and disillusionment, I ran; I ran from what I felt I had become.  I left everything that I knew and loved; I left an identity I felt I could no longer be proud of.  What I did in 1968 was wrong.  I was wrong to run away. Even though I was in no danger of being discovered, I have returned to take responsibility for my actions.

Ron could have said that 1968 was a year that brought to a head the dashed hopes of the African-American community, the hopes that had risen with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1960 sit-ins, the 1961 freedom rides, his 1964 voter registration work in Mississippi.  He could have pointed to the widespread, particularly among black youth, rage and despair following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” (exploitation of white backlash) victorious race for President, and the multitude of other unaddressed black community grievances.  He didn’t.  He took responsibility for his action.

Ron likes to quote Victor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning.  While in a World War 2 Nazi extermination camp awaiting his likely death in a gas oven, psychologist Frankl took secretive notes on his experience, and that of his fellow death-camp residents.  These became the basis of his book; he was fortunate to survive.  Frankl observed that some lived and others died, often before they were taken to the gas chamber.  He asked why, and concluded that some choose to live.  In a moment of unimaginable despair, some gave up and others decided they would choose life, and struggled to survive.

In Mississippi, as a “field secretary” for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Ron learned about choice and its significance for the human spirit.  In the face of likely eviction, firing, denial of credit, beating, house burning and even death, black sharecroppers, tenant farmers, day laborers, domestics and others choose to go to the county courthouse and attempt to register to vote.  At that time, the likelihood of their passing the test administered by a racist registrar was close to zero.  Yet the very act of going to the courthouse was the first step to freedom.  

In his work with young people, Ron applies his Mississippi lessons and his Victor Frankl learnings.  His confidence and faith in youth’s capacity to make positive choices is the basis upon which he earns their trust.  

And here’s the interesting thing:  it is not by validating the causes of their negative choices that Ron turns young people around.  Just as he choose not to use the credible reasons for his shooting at a policeman that the year 1968 would certainly justify, so he does not let young people choose to justify their action with the credible excuses they can find in their life circumstances. 

In the early-to-mid 1960s, we who worked in Mississippi were called “outside agitators.”  Indeed, we were challenging people to make the choice to fight against their circumstances.  One-by-one people were challenged to register to vote.  Ron now challenges young people to make a choice for a constructive life.  He has extraordinary success, as attested to by the testimonies of dozens of young people who wrote their stories to Judge Lisa Novak, and two of them who flew here to provide testimony during the trial.

This quiet courage—to take responsibility for himself, to make the choice to turn himself in, to continue challenging young people to take responsibility and make life-affirming choices—is at the core of what Ronald Bridgeforth is as a human being, whatever and whomever he may have been in 1968.

And here’s a note on the future:  I believe that Ron is going to make a difference in Alameda County, and offer lessons useful throughout the country.  He brings together two strands of thinking that appear contradictory:  understanding the circumstances that lead people to dropping out of school, drug abuse, crime and other anti-social behavior, and a loving demand of those with whom he works that they take responsibility for their lives and choose a life-affirming direction. 

These contradictions go deeply into the debates that now go on among the heirs to the civil rights movement, and their counterparts in Latino, Asian, poor white and other movements for social and economic justice.  Ron’s life, work and thinking have a contribution to make in these debates.  I believe they will.

Ron and Diane now need about $12,000 to pay the fine levied against him in his conviction, as well as to cover other costs associated with his trial. (Defense attorney Paul Harris has donated most of his time.) 

I hope you will be moved to contribute to Ron’s cause.  We have already raised about five thousand dollars among Ron’s friends and family.  We hope to get this debt “off the books” before Ron’s release from county jail so that he and Diane can look forward to the time when Ron will again be doing his work in the community, and to their time together as husband and wife. 

Please dig deeply.  It is rare that we are able to both give to an individual and an important cause at the same time.  I think this is one of those moments.  And please respond as soon as you can. There is a monthly court-imposed fine that must be paid, as well as other on-going costs.

Checks should be made to “Paul Harris,” and sent to me at 442 Vicksburg Street; San Francisco, CA 94114.

Thank you!  (If you’ve already contributed to Ron’s cause, thanks again.)

Sincerely, 
Mike Miller