OPINION: Pause To Wonder

We must pause to wonder whether we have any moral standing in the world to be asserting arguments about abuses by other governments when the following is going on at home:

• The Mexican Government is requesting information about Project Gunrunner, also called “Fast and Furious”, which began in Phoenix. U.S. agents were directed to allow guns to be brought into Mexico. The theory was that they could then determine where they ended up and bust the cartels. The Mexican Government was never told about this. How many of these guns ended up killing people?

• Christian Longo is one of 35 men on death row in Oregon. He and about half of the others want to donate their organs after they are executed, to help save the lives of others who need organ transplants. There’s no law preventing it, but prisons across the country won’t accept their requests.

• Chief Warrant Officer Denise Barnes, the commander at the Military brig at Quantico says Bradley Manning (Pvt. Manning is accused of sending Pentagon documents to Wikileaks) will continue to be stripped of his underwear at bedtime. Manning’s lawyer says:
“There can be no conceivable justification for requiring a soldier to surrender all his clothing, remain naked in his cell for seven hours, and then stand at attention the subsequent morning,” he wrote. “This treatment is even more degrading considering that Pfc. Manning is being monitored — both by direct observation and by video — at all times.”

• A women and her mother sold $10.00 of marijuana to a police informant inside their home. A few weeks later, the informant returned and bought $20.00 worth of pot. Both women were first-time offenders. They plead guilty without plea agreements. Patricia got ten years in prison, her mother got 30 years suspended, with five years of drug treatment. Both received fines in the thousands of dollars. Patricia was taken into custody immediately. She has effectively lost her four children and her husband. She was unemployed at the time, and the family had recently lost their home. She had previously been employed at a nursing home, as a certified nursing assistant and certified medical assistant, work she’ll never get again when out of prison.

• Almost 38 years ago, three young men who were silenced for trying to expose continued segregation, systematic corruption, and horrific abuse in the United States. This didn’t happen in the Middle East, Egypt, Tunisia or even North Korea. It happened here in the “city on the hill” the “shining beacon of freedom,” and is it is still happening today. Every day for almost forty years, Herman and Albert sit in segregated housing, solitary, isolation, “the hole,” sensory deprivation, silent torture, or whatever you want to call it, continuing to be silenced and isolated. They sit silenced knowing their innocence has been established.

These examples have been reported in just the last few weeks. It continues to worsen every day and every week not only in these high profile incidents, but in local jails, state and federal prisons with regularity. While we read about abuses, are shocked, and protest in countries far away, we turn a blind eye to our own.