The Dawn Porter Diaries:
a reflective interview by Kaya Abrahamson
Upon arriving at Wheaton College Thursday evening; settling into an auditorium seat and realizing that I couldn’t get any cell service in the room; I was honestly a bit disheartened. I admittedly have a short attention span for things that don’t interest me. So, when I knew that I would not have any available distraction or outside entertainment during the course of an evening I predicted to be a bit long and a bit boring; I was less than ecstatic.
BUT I was in luck. It turned out that I did not desire an additional outlet to maintain my energy and attention- Dawn’s story was actually enough to keep it. She spoke well- with confidence, humility, and eloquence. She seemed to actually care about the specific audience that she had; as opposed to just treating us as another stock group of people she’d have to speak for. Though I was very interested by the lecture and gained a respect for Mrs. Porter, I did not agree with everything that she said.
When she shared this opinion:
“There’s a difference between legal and ethical evidence and whether it should be shared or not”
I found myself shaking my head. Dawn would make vague opinionated statements often throughout her lecture that lended to the idea of
“I’m not going to tell you what is correct and incorrect but this is what I think it is and you should probably agree with me”.
The majority of her message was on public defenders for those charged with breaking the law. She focused heavily on people not being defended properly, but my rebuttal question is: if they did nothing wrong, why do they need anyone to defend them? Her statements read to me as
“whether someone is charged with a crime or not should depend on their history and personal experience”.
This is not the only related statement she made of this genre. I believe that though some cases are more unfortunate and even sometimes more unfair than others- if someone commits a crime they must be reprimanded for it no matter what.
She uses statistics in an attempt to support her opinions but they did not convince me. Here are a few of them:
“America has the most people in prisons at 2.2 million.”
She believes this is because too many African-Americans are convicted of crimes that they are unfairly judged for in comparison to whites who she believes commit the same crimes and are not always convicted.
“80% of people charged with crimes only have the choice of public defenders.”
— She seems to disregard what the person did to break the law and instead cares more about the harshness of their consequences. She follows up that statistic with her opinion that
“We all have a point of view- no one is objective.”
I disagree. If someone is a criminal they are a possible threat to society. Why should I as someone who has chosen to abstain from illegal activity and not break any laws; have to be vulnerable to the possible negative effects of those who have?
That, my friends, is the first question I would ask of Mrs. Porter. I would then inquire the following things:
1. What was the very first thing that happened to you to spark your desire to defend this specific group of people?
2. If you could only tell the world one sentence for the rest of your life; what would it be?
3. What is your response to Romans 13:1–5?
“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience.”
Do you think defending someone who has committed an unlawful act is something we should be condoning as Christians?
4. Is there one thing that viewers/hearers of your work seem to misread that you’d like to set the record straight on?
5. What is your biggest aspiration?
