Professional Advocacy Association of Texas Keynote address

By Ronnie Earle, September 14, 2005

It is an honor to be invited to speak to you today. I appreciate your inviting me. It takes courage these days for people to invite me anywhere.

I must point out, though, that when Terry (Scarborough) was speaking the drapes were closed and it was dark in here, but now that I’m talking the light has come in the room.

Terry said a lot of harsh things about me, and it’s true that we’re different. I always wanted to be more like Terry. He’s tall, I’m not. He’s handsome. He played in the backfield, I played on the line, and a linebacker rearranged my teeth.

And as Terry himself will tell you, he’s often wrong but never in doubt.

Terry talked about the law. I’m not going to talk about the law. I’m going to talk about you–about us.

This feels something like a reunion here today; so many of us have been friends for so long, since before we started doing what we’re doing now. Read More…

Looking Inside Austin

By Ronnie Earle, Feb. 3, 2004

Like many of you, I’ve been here a long time.

Everybody here has helped Austin to become what it is today, this beautiful, peaceful oasis that beckons to the adventurous, whether young or old.

There is just enough of the old Austin left to pass on the lessons of maybe a century. What’s good? What’s right? What do we do here now?

It’s time to start saying what we’ve learned over all these years.

First, remember that bumper sticker a few years ago that said, “It still ain’t weird enough for me”?

Well, I don’t know about you, but it’s finally gotten weird enough for me. Read More…

Community Restorative Justice and the Future of Democracy

By Ronnie Earle, May 2000

Justice in our culture has many meanings, but mostly it has become a hero word. We have grown accustomed to thinking of it as vengeance, or payback, and usually as one act, as in the execution of a criminal or the movie killing of a bad guy.

Justice in its original contemplation was neither so crude nor so simple. It was a sense of balance, of completeness, of harmony and fairness. It involved the daily, mundane work of building community by taking care of the relationships upon which community is based. It was not as simple as an immediate release of anger; it was certainly more meaningful. The Hebrew word Shalom comes closest to describing this sense of justice as a general sort of okay-ness that was shared in and contributed to by everyone in the community.

There is a burgeoning movement in this country toward a more participatory practice of justice. Now mostly confined to a few visionaries in criminal justice, child protection, community organizing, social work, business, and academia, the restorative community justice movement has the potential to revitalize our moribund institutions of liberty. Read More…