I have never written about this before. I am prompted to do so today because of a New York Times Magazine Feature Story that appeared over the weekend.

I was born and mostly raised in New York City. Growing up, I lived in an apartment complex in mid-town. My neighbor during those years was Lori Berenson.

Lori and I are two years apart. She is older than me. We lived on the same floor in a 8 story duplex apartment complex. This is a building where you got to know your neighbors. Lori’s family still lives in that apartment complex and so does part of my family. So when I go back to NYC to visit, I still stay in the apartment that I grew up in.

Lori and I had a cordial relationship. We were not close friends. She went to public school and I went to private school. When you are a kid, a two year age difference is a big gap. We traveled in different circles that did not overlap. Yet when we ran into each other in the laundry room, in the elevator, at the playground or at the supermarket, we would engage in light banter and chit chat. We were never close.

Lori and I were very similar in temperment. We both liked to keep our own company and did not particularly share our inner-most thoughts with others. We were both serious young people. She was socially conscious even though her family was not particularly political. I too was a young social activist. In retrospect, I think that we would have had much in common to discuss.

Lori left for college a year before I did and I would see her from time to time during the holidays when we were both back home. Lori became interested in Latin America. I was taken with the Caribbean. She traveled to El Salvador and was fascinated with radical nuns. I went to Cuba and was infatuated with Assata Shakur. By the time Lori was arrested in Peru in 1995 and sentenced to life in prison, I had moved to Chicago. I didn’t learn about her arrest until several months later.

What did I do once I learned about Lori’s arrest and conviction? I am sad to say… Nothing. When I would travel back to New York, I never stopped by to check on her family, to ask for news of Lori. I was silent about the situation and so were most of our other neighbors. I think that people were shocked by what had happened and I do not think that anyone knew how to react. I certainly did not.

After the first year of Lori’s imprisonment, I finally started to do things like signing petitions asking for clemency and making phone calls to elected officials asking for them to intervene in her case. But still, I did not directly reach out to her family to offer my support and to ask how I could help. I could have done so at any point and I just did not. I felt guilty about it but I didn’t know how to broach the subject when I would run into her parents. I feared that they must be exhausted from the sad looks and the probing questions. Instead, I acted like nothing was amiss. I acted as I always had with them. Saying hello in the elevators and making small talk.

Over the years though, I became obsessed with following any information on Lori’s condition. I looked for ways to support efforts that were set up to free her from prison. To this day, over 15 years later, I have not yet talked to her parents about Lori’s situation. It feels too late now. That time has passed. I built a wall between the personal and the political. I felt comfortable swimming in the river of the political. This has always been the case for me. I wonder how many others of my neighbors did the same. We have never talked about it. Where Lori Berenson was concerned, the residents of East Midtown Plaza adopted a generalized posture of silence.

Lori is on parole in Peru now. “Free” after 15 years in prison. She is unable to leave the country until 2015. I can’t even imagine what she has endured over all of her years of imprisonment. Now she faces a new challenge: social ostracism in a country that despises her. How much can a person endure? Some part of that answer can be found in the last few paragraphs of the Times story about Lori. I think that it captures the essence of the woman. I encourage those interested to read the entire article. It is long but it needs to be.

In the 15 years Berenson spent in prison, her peers have moved from early adulthood into middle age. “The world has changed,” she told me in August. “Internet, giant malls.” Technologically, she’s catching up, and has grown comfortable using e-mail and Skype. But at 41, she is still grappling with the fallout of youthful choices that have ended badly: her vocation; her marriage; her love of Latin America. The passion that fueled her move there seems to have left a kind of void, and beyond the need to support herself and her son, her future remains a blank.

Of course, Berenson’s future won’t really be her own until her parole ends; for now, she is raising Salvador alone in Peru, with limited options. If she ever feels despair or defeat at these conditions, she wouldn’t show it — not at 26, with a life sentence in front of her, and not now. Her capacity to absorb fear and discomfort is partly what has saved her — and also, most likely, what got her into trouble in the first place. But this is speculation; Berenson resists such storytelling, leaving the rest of us to our own devices in trying to unlock the mystery of her biography. What she can’t elude is our desire to do so: a notoriety she has sustained, uncomfortably, for most of her adulthood. “I am always conscious,” she said, “of who I am.”

Click here to watch video of Lori speaking for herself. Lori Berenson was a political prisoner and also my neighbor…

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  By Jennifer, March 7, 2011 @ 4:26 pm

  Mariame- I completely understand your feeling on this subject. I don’t particularly remember Lori, I was only 15 by the time she was arrested and dealing with my own teenage angst. But over the last few years, every time I go home, my parents have a new newspaper article about her that they want me to read. We have discussions for hours over the dinner table about whether her arrest and conviction was right or wrong. I believe that my parents also talk to Lori’s parents occasionally to find out updates on her and what efforts her parents are making politically. My unrest has always been the opposite of yours, although they check in socially, I keep asking my parents “if you’re so interested, what have you done to help?”. The answer is always the same, “it’s not our place.” This bystander attitude is what causes many of the problems in our justice system. Be proud of yourself that although you never addressed the social aspect, you jumped in to actually make an effort to make a difference. I’m sure at the end of the day, her family would respect that more than a token “I’m sorry, how is she today?”
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  By prison culture, March 7, 2011 @ 4:33 pm

  Hey Jennifer – Great to read your comments here. I guess that each of us in the East Midtown Plaza contingent has had our own way of processing what happened to Lori. Thanks for sharing your experience with me. I hope that you are well.

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