A Good Neighborhood

by Therese Anne Fowler

acolyte,

She wasn’t thinking about how easily Brad had engineered the situation; it was so much easier to demonize the black boy.

Was it really so difficult or somehow wrong to show some humanity? Or did spending all day every workday in the company of nameless, faceless men in orange jumpsuits, an endless parade of angry or fearful or angry and fearful men, dehumanize you after a while? Or did the county deliberately put these automatons in the job so that on the occasion when some inmate lost control they could respond quickly with brute force, no need to waste even a second taking into account why the man might have cracked?

Words, though, are how we humans have been communicating with one another almost since time before time. What has more meaning to humankind than words? Without a call to action, change rarely occurs.

Start here, please, in communion with one another despite our differences, recognizing that without start there is no end.