a friend recently sent me an email about her young cousin, yaman al qadri, a 19 year-old college student who was viciously beaten and taken into custody by syrian forces. another friend posted on her facebook page about the 14 year-old boy hamza al-khatib who'd been tortured and beaten to death. there is the recent story of sasha and RISD, the children used by jerry sandusky at penn state (and no one complained because they didn't want to jeopardize the football team, or the main money-generating activity at the university). friends at universities and colleges all over the country have told me about the way students are being criminalized for the smallest infractions especially if those students have not paid their tuition upfront. no one wants an insurance liability, even if ethics suggest otherwise.
in moments of uncertainty, do we always prey on the small? we use them to appease our fear. maybe that's how we feel we regain a bit of power and control in our world. are the smallest on the food chain likely to become casualties of the current global uncertainty?
correct me if my vision of a pattern doesn't fit. (my father used to tell me a joke that illustrated the human habit of imagining that everyone else is in the same situation as you are. the story began with two college boys and one lent the other his motorcycle. the second boy ended by crashing his friend's bike in a head-on collision with a car during the night. when the owner of the motorcycle came to visit his friend in hospital, he asked how it happened. the second boy said, "the bridge was so narrow that when i saw the headlights of 2 motorcycles coming towards me, instead of passing, i decided to drive between them.")
on the other hand, there is the recent death of hana williams and the injuries of other children relating to the parenting book, "to train up a child" by michael pearl. the book that has taken the right-wing parenting world by storm and has thousands of adherents. it seems that the most defenseless amongst us are the first to suffer the effects of the fear that the world is slipping away. it's clear that the rigidity of the tea partiers and the harsh, unwavering judgement of people like ron paul will certainly take out the weakest first.
while people are rising up against "wall street" and the 1% - despite michael bloomberg and the administration's ongoing attempts to squash them - perhaps we should also be rising up FOR children.
we should be taking a stand for a kinder, gentler world that protects our most vulnerable and most quiet.
would you call it #occupyhumanity ?
very well said! so many children are being hurt everyday. Atlanta was announced as #1 in the world for child sex trafficking! Where is the occupy for that? The children are our future, we should be doing right by them. Its a shame really
ReplyDeleteYour last two blog posts really resonate with me. What is it with all this victimizing of children? I am still trying to wrap my head around how in the world Sasha could have been treated so harshly at RISD. She is 18, a child - there is only so much her brain and her life experience gives her the ability to process.
ReplyDeleteThe issue in regards to children that has infiltrated my life is the extent to which birth parents' rights reign supreme over the so-called "best interests of the child" in juvenile dependency court - even in pretty egregious cases of abuse and neglect.
"One child at a time," is my husband and my motto, when it comes to helping children. That they are treated as non-citizens is pervasive and must be fought.