Compassion
By Brandon Astor Jones
"If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is something that could better be changed in ourselves" — Carl Gustav Jung
Chaquita Damon, age five, was recently arrested, booked, fingerprinted, photographed and held in police custody after being taken from the Edgewater Elementary School in Pensacola, Florida. It is alleged that she inflicted more than two dozen scratches on the school's counsellor; it seems that the child hurled furniture at and bit the counsellor repeatedly.
Justin Rezendes, age six, was arrested, cuffed and taken from the Padgett Elementary School to jail. The Lakeland, Florida, youngster was charged with felony battery upon the physical education teacher. It is also alleged that Justin threatened to kill the sheriff's deputy. A judge released him into the custody of his grandparent. He remains under "house arrest" until the matter is resolved.
Unfortunately, there are a growing number of situations like Chaquita's and Justin's all across the United States. Then there are the older children. By now most of the world has heard about the violence that has devastated communities such as Jonesboro, Arkansas, Pearl, Mississippi, West Paducah, Kentucky, and Springfield, Oregon.
Michelle Calhoun, a student at Thurston High School, in Oregon, where the most recent killings took place, described the carnage and the shooter's semi-automatic gunfire: "He just mowed 'em down". That she could so nonchalantly refer to the dead and injured as if she was talking about the mowing of her grass on a cool Saturday afternoon, speaks volumes about the nature of the problem.
A large portion of the nation's leaders and hypocritical politicians are pretending to be in total shock as they ask "Why?". In their outrage, they want to try juveniles as adults. They want to make new laws because the children are too young to sentence to death, under present laws.
Here in Georgia, at least one politician wants a law that arms teachers. The absurd idea is not at all surprising when you consider that it comes from a state in which a part of the population is required, by law, to own a gun. Others are trying to make political headway by trying to abolish parole for prisoners.
They are the same people who want to get tougher on crime and prisoners; the same people who are leading the rush to execute the men, women and children who often have been (and will be) found innocent after their executions; the same people who pretend to want "equality for all" when speaking out of one side of their mouth (while tearing down all of the good that affirmative action programs have done) as they lie out of the other side.
They did not suddenly appear on the political scene. They have been gaining strength and numbers for more than 30 years. They are no longer ashamed to be racists and/or sexists openly. They are in-your-face vociferous hatemongers on a daily basis.
Some take overt pride in being called "angry white males", but the larger number — and more subtle members — piously refer to themselves as "Promise Keepers" and the like. A more appropriate name would be: selfish, greedy, racist and sexist white men and their head-scratching, shuffling lackeys of colour.
For a generation and a half now, they have promoted ideas that routinely deny most poor and people of colour our basic human rights. They even blame the loss of their jobs, past and present, on people of colour and women — hence their never-ending assaults upon the gains of race and gender equity in workplaces that affirmative action schemes have produced.
They rarely seek to resolve differences by compromise and/or counselling because compromise is alien to them. Selfishness is the cornerstone of their creed. Why compromise or mediate, when you can just barge in and shoot, execute, bomb or lock up the offending parties? They think that fairness and compromise are dirty words, and that to use them would make them appear weak.
After more than 30 years of this kind of keep-minorities-and-women-in-their-place political posturing, a very volatile and misguided mind-set has produced a generation of equally volatile and misguided young people highly prone to violence at a very early age. For the most part, those angry, mean-spirited and misguided young people who have traumatised communities and schools are indeed the sons and daughters of those same "angry white males [and the occasional female]" who created this dangerous mind-set.
Their sons and daughters are doing precisely what they have been taught to do in both overt and subtle ways: eliminate, rather than work through their problems with, other people.
Yes, there is a need for mor metal detectors; yes, institute more people-programs; and yes again, add more police too, but if those so-called leaders and politicians do not soon get more real compassion, none of us should be surprised if youthful violence completely overwhelms the USA.
Surely by now we can all see that children mimic adults very well. Change will come only when the masses speak out and find the courage of their individual regret and shame for a great nation so devoid of compassion.
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He welcomes letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G3-77, Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.Brandon and his friends are trying to raise funds to pay for a lawyer for his appeal. If you can help, please make cheques payable to the Brandon Astor Jones Defence Account and post to 41 Neutral St, North Sydney NSW 2060, or any Commonwealth Bank, account No. 2127 1003 7638.]