I was born in Chicago. When I was five my parents bought their first small house in Park Ridge, Illinois. It was in a neighborhood of similar two-story "square" houses all with manicured lawns and flower gardens in the summer. Our neighbors were nice and there were enough kids on the block to have plenty of fun...sledding nearby in the winter, games of kick-the-can in the summer. We got on our bikes on Saturday mornings to roam nearby new construction sites, build tree forts in nearby apple trees....it was sort of a "Leave It To Beaver" existence. I walked five blocks to Carpenter Elementary School and came home for lunch.
My parents bought a bigger home across town when I was in seventh grade and I made new neighborhood friends while keeping up with the ones from my old neighborhood because we all went to the same junior high school. I went to Ripon College in 1964 and graduated four years later without student loans to burden my future.
Dave and I got married and followed his insurance career from the midwest to the mid-Atlantic states and back again....several times. We parented two kids, had nice houses and lived in communities with good schools. Our progress through the years was what it was "supposed" to be.
Once again, after yesterday's verdict in Kenosha, I am reminded that my life progressed the way it did by starting with a lucky chance....which sperm met which egg, where I was raised, the support from my parents, the opportunities presented and taken.
When I sit and think about others who live in America where things are "supposed" to be equal under the law and who do not enjoy anything close to the open doors that I've walked through over my 74+ years it is a sad shock to my system. I feel so deflated today....or some feeling I can't really identify. I am angry and frustrated and in a state of disbelief. Not guilty on all counts.....ridiculous. And I don't believe for one moment that the jury chosen would have reached the same conclusion if the defendant sobbing on the stand had been a person of color.
I refuse to mention his name.....I wish, instead of surely becoming a "hero" to the far right and showing up on every FOX interview show in the coming weeks he would just fade away and face some sort of justice somewhere down the road. Maybe the next time he decides to "help" a community by taking a loaded gun to patrol the streets as a "medic" he will, once again, kill people but then be held accountable. I hope this haunts him for the rest of his life....as it will haunt the families who lost someone to his violent actions.
Equal justice under the law.....give me a break.
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