The Power of Persuasion
Karen Tse | Legal Rights Activist
Explaining, Tse tells the story of Vishna, a 4-year-old boy born in prison, who gave hope to his fellow prisoners by crawling through the bars of his cell--only to stretch his hand back inside the bars of the other prisoners' cells and touch them. Then there was the Indian nun who inspired Tse after Cambodian prison directors threatened her life. "You must seek to find the Christ or the Buddha in each person," she said. "Then you must work with that Christ or Buddha."
All of the stories carry the message of what Tse calls "the power of transformative love." It's a philosophy that Tse has successfully channeled throughout her career, including with one of the first prison directors she worked with in Cambodia. "He had a huge scar in the front of his forehead, and he was known to be very cruel," Tse says. "The first time I met him he said, 'If we see any of the prisoners coming down, we will hit them down like rats.'"
The prisoners, stuffed into dark quarters with no opportunity to challenge their sentences, were clearly suffering, but the director wouldn't let Tse inside. Looking for "the Christ or the Buddha," Tse decided not to fight. "I said, 'Can we go for a walk?' And I remember he looked at me--incredulously--and turned to his guards and said, 'Did you hear her?' And then he said, 'OK. Let's go for a walk.'" Eventually, Tse won the director's trust, and soon she was in the prison every day. Working together, Tse and the director tore down the prison's dark cells, built a garden, and started exercise classes--for both the prisoners and the guards.
By going to law school, Tse had followed the advice of Martin Luther King Jr. and developed a "tough mind." After returning from Cambodia, it was time to concentrate on the "tender heart." In law school, Tse says, "I thought it was about being adversarial and being competitive and being 'the best.'" But on her climb, she says, she had forgotten everyone around her--and about the things that really mattered: community, the larger world, her faith. So she went to divinity school, became an ordained minister--and, in the process, founded IBJ. The chronology is no accident. "It was in divinity school," she says, "that I began to understand that the hope for the human world lies in the human heart." She had found her life's mission, but to make it real she would need to raise money. Her 2001 deal with Gong depended on her providing the Chinese government with 400 working computers, and Tse had no way to pay. Fundraising did not come easily; at first, even her parents turned her down. But after one $300,000 George Soros grant and a chance encounter with computer mogul Michael Dell later, everything got a lot easier.
Candles and bells. Tse's success surprised exactly no one. "There are some people that, the purity of their intention is inescapable," says Mia Yamamoto, a criminal defense lawyer who serves on IBJ's board. "You're looking for the bullshit factor with just about everybody: 'This couldn't possibly be as altruistic as it sounds.' But I've known her for a long time, and she's really like that."
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