CRIME, PUNISHMENT, AND JUST-U.S. (Part 2 of 2)

“Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law (Sophocles).”

Yet, like children building sand-towers with constancy and then destroying them with laughter … some delight in laying down laws and even more in breaking them. Such conditions have come to thwart the individual moral compass; crossing all races, cultures, ages, and economic classes living in urban, suburban and rural places, Crime Has No Limits! Whether it be white collar (for entrepreneurial economic gain and fame) or blue collar (often from facing long term inescapable economic deprivation), whether physically violent or property related, crime has become good business for merchants, insurance companies and other institutions.

“But it is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind, that you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others and yourself” while chasing CAD (the automated Capitalist American Dream) when finger pointing public officials while negating personal accountability to both community needs, and efforts made by local supportive services. Were our communities like the 1630 Massachusetts Bay Company, requiring a public loyalty pledge from its members? (Oath of a Free Man *). Were our community members like the Young Lords, the Black Panthers, the Guardian Angels, and the picketing Catholic Marxist Priests of the 60’s able to break from racial, economic, and political divides to put local issues in local hands regardless of police and local official intent and reaction. Things simply got done! In addition to protests, abandoned buildings were taken and renovated, official offices were stormed and held hostage, food and medical supplies were distributed, educational after school initiatives were made available and crime was given a NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) NOTICE as community self-affirmation steadily flourished.  

While organizing to minimize potential clashes, arrests and rioting, such actions eventually got a wide range of official address. Even the local police temporarily initiated CPOP (officers walking the beat) and PAL (police athletic league) projects in N.Y.C. to facilitate community rapport on a first name basis. Unfortunately, Reagan’s poorly planned and executed “War on Drugs” project of the 1980’s changed priorities and a dramatic growth in crime ensued. Fellow citizens, history affirms resident anger without hate yields actions with positive results. Oppressors can muffle the drum and loosen the strings of the lyre to distort your community cry for help, but who shall command God’s skylark not to sing the truth? To make ends meet, especially among the young middle and lower economic strata, crime has become fundamental to the individual “get the most for the least effort” notion of the American dream. And unfortunately, until community cries out NIMBY, racial economic disparity in punishment for alleged crimes will continue for Just-U.S. to continually accept. So, cry NIMBY for all and not JUST-U.S.

Note: Read more of Joe Yrizarry’s work, go to 2bspoken.blogspot.com, where you can interactively dialog comments with the columnist. 

(*) The “Oath of a Freeman” was a loyalty pledge required of all new members of the Massachusetts Bay Company in the 1630s. A supposed original printing of the document surfaced in 1985 and was touted as the oldest surviving print in the United States, but it was later revealed to be the work of forger Mark Hofmann.