Waiting.

Who sang ‘the waiting is the hardest part’? How true it is.

When this began, after the initial shock wore off, we were worried. Jace would shrink in fear when a siren would sound down the road. He would wake to the sound and then not be able to get back to sleep.

For me, I just couldn’t fathom how or why police would even do this kind of thing? Create criminals out of law abiding citizens. I contacted lawyers, researched the police and ICAC (the internet crimes against children task force), wrote the ACLU. All the right moves. And then, slowly, I MOSTLY convinced myself it would all just pass. Yet each time a court date would come around I would stress out for weeks before (and we had three court dates over the course of the year). Trying to stuff the worry down, keep it from taking over.

Then the worst came true. With only circumstantial evidence, a confused young man’s life is forever altered.  Now I wait again. In a few weeks, August 23rd, I get to see what justice really means in this country. I get to find out how many days of imprisonment my son will try to live through because he was too smart to believe a lying cop and too stupid to fathom their twisted agenda.

On August 23rd, I will die, a little bit more.

I don’t know if this blog will do any good, in the long run, for change to these laws. From what I’ve read this has been going on a long time, a decade or so? And no one really knows about it. I sure didn’t.

Seems evil strikes at any group that has ‘less’. Minorities, women, immigrants, mental health sufferers, homeless. You can make anyone instantly not matter just by calling them a name.  Nigger, slut, terrorist, crazy, bum, free-loader, pedophile – doesn’t matter if it’s true – whenever a group of people are vulnerable there is corruption. This time the police, in the name of our safety, have targeted young, educated, white, middle class men. I am surprised, although I really shouldn’t be. It means I haven’t really, although I thought I had, opened my eyes to the corruption that has been there all along. My sister and I love the strong reminder from Martin Niemoller, that he wrote when he realized, too late, the importance of activism.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

What would it take for you to speak up?