Free Political Prisoner
Rev. Joy Powell

By Andrew S.

Last Thanksgiving I made my pilgrimage from Rochester, NY to a suburb of New York City in the hope of making Thanksgiving a happy holiday for Apostle Joy Powell, my best friend.  I had come to know how horrible the holidays could be for people who didn’t have family or a big thanksgiving feast to enjoy.  After I blew a flat, I made it to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison, just before visiting hours ended.  When Joy hobbled forward to hug me, I knew I had made the right plans for Thanksgiving. Joy told me that one of the guards had crushed her in one of the heavy steel prison doors, breaking her foot.  Prior to entering prison, Joy always looked like a movie star, but now she looked terrible.  I could see the suffering of incarceration written all over face; bearing the cross of prison life had begun taking its toll.

• • •

I moved to Rochester, NY in 1998 when my car broke down; I’m not sure if the radiator kept overheating because it’s old age and poor condition, or if divine forces kept the engine overheating.  I first met Apostle Joy Powell in 2002 when she led a rally against the Rochester Police Department’s fatal beating of Lawrence Rogers.  Experiencing a mental health episode, Mr. Rogers had ran through a grocery store in his underwear shouting, “Jesus is coming;” police arrived to subdue Mr. Rogers and he bit off one of the fingers of the police officers.  In response, over 35 police officers beat the man to death.  Apostle Powell and a few dozen protesters rallied outside of the grocery store before marching down to the local police station, demanding that the police show them the videos of the beating.  I still remember standing on the corner of Child Street watching Joy Powell shouting through a bullhorn at the window of the police department with the television stations following her.  The officer inside the station closed the blinds on the window and hid inside the station.  Ha!  I had never seen anything like it; Apostle Powell’s passion for justice inspired me and I thought to myself, “I’d like to get to know that lady!”

Apostle Joy Powell was Malcolm X, Cindy Sheehan and Rev. Al Sharpton all rolled into one!  A Brooklyn native, Joyce Powell had previously done time on a drug-related conviction and had been a real deal gangster who trafficked drugs and guns between New York City and Rochester.  Listening to copies of Joy’s hip-hop albums made me chuckle when she used to perform as “Queen Joy and Pain,” a foul-mouthed rapper whose rhymes would make Eazy-E and Luke Skyywalker blush.  Changing her life forever, a drug dealer murdered one of her three sons and Joy rallied nonstop for weeks until the City tore down drug houses on her street and built new housing.  Gun violence crippled another son of hers; Joy accepted Jesus Christ as her personal savior and became an influential black activist crying out against violence, police brutality and poverty in the City of Rochester. 

Before Cindy Sheehan introduced our country to the unstoppable force of one disgruntled mother’s love, Joy Powell taught the City of Rochester to never underestimate the determination of the lone pissed-off mom.  One time, Joy dragged me to the rally she put on every year to remember her son’s death.  I sat on the curb, wishing I had something to eat, while other moms who had lost their sons to gun violence began telling their stories.  I found most remarkable the women’s crystal clear recollection of the instant when they learned their children had died.  As one lady began telling her story, I could tell by the gaze in her eyes that she was right there, completely present in that one moment in time.  “I was watching the local news on tv about how a teenager had been shot and killed; right then the phone rang, a police officer asked to speak to me by my name and I knew that the kid on television was mine.  I began crying, “no, no, no!”  Opening the front door, I began running and running and running, I was half way across town before I realized that I was only in my bathrobe.”    

Supposedly the most segregated hour in America is on Sunday morning; although at Joy’s church, services would often exceed three hours of non-stop Joy Powell testifying.  Joy preached the word of the Lord with the intensity and rhythm of a gattling gun; Joy’s small church held a couple dozen people, fewer than that usually came.  Although I first came to watch Joy preach without any preconceived notions of her or her congregation, I’ve noticed a deeply held preconception white people have of black preachers.  When I talked about working with inner-city preachers, many white friends of mine would conjure forth the stereotype of the blinged-out, tithe-hustling hypocrite with an expensive car and a run-down storefront church.  Although stereotypes almost always derive from real characters, I never experienced anything but honest devotion from Joy.  I came to appreciate the non-denominational faith movement as largely sincere effort to form a direct and personal relationship with God without an impersonal or hierarchical structure.  Since Jesus and his apostles focused on their relationship with God and never held title to a multi-million dollar mega church, why should we judge the integrity of a congregation by their facilities?  If Mary gave birth to Jesus today, I think Joseph and her would be crashing on the floor of a small, storefront church in the hood. 

I’ve heard more than one person ask how Joy could be an “Apostle,” a title she called herself.  Really, the twelve “real” apostles were simply a bunch of everyday slobs that abruptly stopped what they doing and followed Jesus; so if we gave up everything and lived our lives for the Lord, why couldn’t anyone become an apostle?  Although many white people may view poor black, inner-city preachers with suspicion, why doesn’t that same critical eye analyze affluent suburban churches?  If upper-middle class congregations invest their overflowing coffers into a spacious campus for their exquisite church without a thought for funding social outreach programs or developing ministries in the inner-city, the wealthy white congregation denies Jesus as much as the black inner-city preacher whose gift of prophecy generates winning Lottery numbers at every Sunday service.      

After suffering through a Catholic upbringing, when I entered adulthood I really hated Christianity, viewed all Christians as hypocrites and believed that wicked, powerful people used religion as a means of brainwashing people to maintain social control.  However, I had my first “breakthrough” experience while praying at a soup kitchen; I worked as a kitchen manager at a homeless shelter that provided free meals six or seven days out of the week, depending on available volunteers.  Immediately before serving every meal, all of the volunteers got in a big circle and prayed; the diversity of the volunteers and the friendly, humble nature of the prayer circle touched me.  The old white ladies that drove in from the suburbs, the black volunteers that lived in the neighborhood and the dirty, raggedy homeless people all holding hands and praying seemed to really be about Jesus, unlike the shallow and impersonal nature of the many churches I had previous experienced.  Really knowing and having a relationship with God still evaded me, but a desire to know God awoke within me.     

After my first “real” job in the nonprofit sector ended with my being laid-off, I applied for unemployment insurance and took the next nine months to set myself up in my own nonprofit.  I leased a warehouse and allocated all of my personal resources, dedicated every waking moment to launching my food distribution program.  Through sacrifice, repeated media exposure and hard work, I began to make progress:  my small trucking operation provided over 10,000 lbs. of groceries to over 500 people per week.
When I began my ministry, I was an ex-Catholic that was anything but "saved," I was an out-of-control atheist that flaunted my lack of faith and dissolute lifestyle; I gravitated towards humanitarian work to fill a void in my life.  As I worked exhausting hours for little pay, I wondered why was I doing this?  I often fell asleep feeling confused and lost.  After talking with Joy, she told me that even though I didn't believe in him, God controls me like a marionette puppet; this was the most reasonable explanation I had ever heard and it made total sense to me! 

I had never “done time” and came from a distinctly different background than Joy Powell, but Joy’s preaching about God’s grace and his forgiveness really hit home for me.  If Joy could turn her life over to Lord and be a witness for God’s love, God could also love me!  Deep down I had always felt a calling to the church, but felt that the church wouldn’t accept me.  When I was 14, I, and a few friends, burglarized a store in the suburbs where I grew up.  Ironically, the first time I ever worked at a soup kitchen was when I did community service for that conviction.  However, I felt horrible about myself and even though I graduated high school with a partial academic scholarship, deep down, I still felt like a criminal.  When Joy belt out her personal history from behind the pulpit, I heard her preach a message of God’s forgiveness that too many religious people have forgotten.  Black, white, young, old, rich and poor, many of us carry so much guilt along with us everyday and more than anything else, we all need to hear that God has forgiven us.  With a refreshing personal candor, Joy told everyone how God had forgiven her and that he could forgive you, too!  For the first time in my life, I believed it!    

Apostle Powell’s second campaign lamenting police brutality against mentally-ill people personally introduced me to the Lord.  A 13-year-old girl had locked herself in the bathroom threatening to slash her wrists open.  The responding police officer believed the knife-holding “tween” a threat to his life and opened fire, shooting the skinny child four times.  Joy took me with her to show me the infamous knife-wielding assailant, so that I could see how the girl was really thin, fragile and a threat to no-one.  Since the family was financially struggling, Joy and I made up a couple of big boxes of groceries with orange juice to help the young girl’s recovery.  Before I met Joy, I had no idea such suffering existed in America, I felt like I had entered another country!  One could find such a socio-economic gap between the affluent suburbs and the impoverished inner-city, that people could travel short distances and “be in a different culture,” without ever leaving the US. 

I stood on the front step as the Joy talked to the child’s mother and I began to think, “Joy must be completely nuts; who would take on the “biggest gang” in Rochester over a confused teenage girl without even getting paid?”  Joy’s sincere thirst for justice, as well as a heart as big as the whole city, touched me, inspiring me to be as courageous.  Dorothy Day philosophized that suffering or exposure to the suffering of others gave one a greater understanding of pain and therefore a greater capacity for compassion; I knew that Joy wanted me to share the suffering of this family, so that I might grow as a Christian.  I realized that Joy was really doing the work of the Lord and really, Jesus calls on all of us to be complete fools.  Giving up all your money, getting tortured to death and drawing ridicule, humiliation and abuse means that you’ve really followed Jesus’ example.  Joy sought out the most defenseless and broken child and made it her mission to stand up for her and others like her.  As I watched Joy and the child’s mother talking, I saw the Lord, working through Joy Powell, for the first time in my life.

Apostle Powell’s efforts pushed Rochester Police Department’s mistake into the limelight, putting pressure on the City of Rochester and making the tragic shooting of the young girl nearly impossible to shove under the carpet.  As fatalities of confused mentally-ill people continued, Apostle Joy’s activism, especially press coverage exposing police brutality, increased.  After a fatal shooting of an elderly lady with a history of mental illness, Joy Powell announced a civilly-disobedient sit-in at the RPD’s Public Safety Dept., but couldn’t organize and implement the action.  At that point, the powers-that-be in Rochester decided that Apostle Powell had gone too far.  Bob Duffy, the newly elected Mayor of Rochester had been the former Chief of Police; under the Duffy administration, the Rochester Police Dept. and the District Attorney’s Office had enough of this “crazy bitch” making them look bad on television.   Joy Powell’s press conferences and rallies undermined public support for an upcoming Project IMPACT, an initiative to bring more police officers onto the streets to combat Rochester’s high crime rate.  As Joy would soon learn, the first amendment to the US Constitution that guaranteed the right to freedom of expression didn’t apply to poor people who relied on state appointed attorneys.

In the spring of 2007, an all-white jury of Joy’s “peers” convicted Apostle Powell on assault and burglary charges and Apostle Powell drew 16 years of hard time.  Leading a lamb to the slaughter, an incompetent Monroe County appointed attorney threw the case during an extremely high profile, politically charged trial.  I’m sure the DA’s office didn’t even have to ask the appointed attorney to throw the case; as the writing was all over the wall:  if Joy Powell walks, you’ll never work for Monroe County again.  The contradictory testimony from a crack-addicted witness that had been previously convicted of fraud and forgery was the only evidence linking Joy Powell to a brutal assault. 

The witness enthusiastically swore that she could identify the supposedly masked Apostle Powell by her voice in the darkened room, even though the same witness told the 911 operator immediately after the assault that she couldn’t identify her attacker.  The public defender refused to admit police reports and 911 transcripts demonstrating that the witness didn’t identify Joy Powell after the attack.  The witness had also “definitely” identified Joy Powell’s crippled son who could only walk with a cane as being the second assailant, but the DA’s office declined to press charges against him.  The District Attorney’s office also gave immunity to the witness for assaulting Joy Powell immediately before Apostle Powell’s alleged burglary and assault against her.  Through out the trial Apostle Joy Powell and her appointed attorney both repeatedly requested that new legal counsel be assigned; Monroe County assigned no other legal counsel.  

Sure enough, a quick glance at the American Civil Liberty Union’s website deplored New York State’s inadequate public defender system:

“Indigent defense services in New York are not sufficiently independent and free from undue political interference. The judiciary, county commissioners and assignment panels largely control indigent defense in many counties by appointing counsel, approving attorney compensation and/or reviewing the use of experts and investigators.  New York has failed to ensure that only qualified counsel represent indigent defendants and that public defenders receive the training necessary to perform competently. Attorneys are often forced to learn on the job, or not at all, as the State does not provide any orientation program for newly hired public defenders, any systematic and comprehensive training, or any technical assistance.”

But really, the ACLU just expounded on what the Bible had already said:

“They shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name's sake.” Luke 21:12 (King James Version) 

Apostle Joy taught me how witnessing for justice was much more than standing on the street corner wearing a sandwich board and telling passersby they were going to hell.  All these years I never knew Christ, because no-one had ever introduced me to the real Jesus.  The real Jesus wasn’t the nice, polite “Wonder Bread Jesus” that right wing ideologues fabricated to come into your heart at stadium revivals; the real Jesus got in your face, knocked over tables and spent his time in the streets with prostitutes and sinners. Jesus would have probably even used a bullhorn, if bullhorns had been around his time.  Religious leaders and the govt. tortured the real Jesus to death with common criminals; the real Jesus wouldn’t have been someone any respectable of society would have wanted to associate with.  Too many people don’t know God or will never know God because they look for the wrong Jesus in the wrong places under the instruction of the wrong people and wouldn’t recognize Jesus if he walked up and smacked them in the face.  If you look for Jesus Christ, who finds you may bring a surprise!