Break It Up

The cycle of punitive justice begins in school. But a transformative movement is changing that, one hallway fight at a time.

- By Adam Hochschild

“There absolutely is an increased appetite for this work now,” says Eric Butler.

When the phone rang at 7 a.m. on a January morning in 2010, Eric Butler learned that his sister had just been murdered.

He had four sisters—“I’m the only boy in a sea of girls”—and 29-year-old Lanell was eight years younger than him. She’d also fled New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, to Florida. There she met a man, “the most popular young guy on the block. This cat was a drug dealer. And I guess he was good at it. Because he made a lot of money. But he became controlling, really, really fast. He started to hit her. And one night she said she was going to leave him. So he beat her up pretty good. And the kids are there.” Lanell had six children. “After he beat her up and he’s in this drunken stupor, he rapes her. When he goes to bed, she sneaks out of the house. She MapQuests her way back to New Orleans.” This was before gps navigation was common, “so she had to get like a physical printout. And he wakes up and realizes that she’s gone. Looks on the computer and he can see where.”

Lanell drove her children to the home of one of her sisters. “She’s got it all planned out. She’s going to register the kids into the elementary school, which is right across the street from my sister’s apartment complex.”