Progress requires participation

Progress requires participation

by Ted Miller

(originally published in Tumbleweird September 2022)

 

“Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. … It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.”

Frederick Douglass, 1857

 

As a young man, I had a naïve belief in the infallibility of our system of government. The history of the United States seems to have shown that the checks and balances contained in the U.S. Constitution ensure that our government of the people can endure anything. If our nation could survive the Civil War, it would seem our democracy could survive anything.

 

Today, I’m not so sure.

 

I have always taken my duty to vote seriously. I believed that, as a conscientious voter, if I voted for politicians who shared my values, the leaders I helped elect would continue to work towards a more perfect union. I believed that, over time, the arc of history would indeed bend towards justice because our system inherently made progress toward the better.

 

But as I have become a student of both history and politics, I have come to realize that progress doesn’t happen because an elected leader suddenly decides that social justice is important. We the people must demand progress.

 

Many of the rights and freedoms we enjoy today are a result of court decisions and not the legislature. As Congress has become more polarized and dysfunctional, we have depended more on the courts for progress. But as we have seen from this year’s Supreme Court decisions, unless those rights and freedoms are enacted into law, those rights and freedoms can be just as easily taken away.

 

I recently saw a Twitter thread reflecting on how we have shifted over the last seven decades from activism, organizing, and legislating to relying on the courts for progress. Niko Bowie (@nikobowie) wrote, in part:

 

For decades, liberals have confidently responded to injustice with “see you in court.” But the same voices are famished for alternatives when courts are the problem. Rather than look for leadership from dissents or Capitol poetry, we need to learn from people who have spent these same decades building power in *spite* of a hostile legal system. … To enact national laws we need political power. To build political power we need to collectively commit not just to the biannual ritual of voting, but also to the day-to-day grit of organizing the people around us. … Organizing is a theory of change that doesn’t trust people atop hierarchies to share our values.

 

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 didn’t happen because President Lyndon Johnson suddenly realized that the promise of Civil War Reconstruction hadn’t been met.

 

Since long before the Civil War, Black voices like Frederick Douglass demanded justice. And although Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a towering force in the civil rights movement, he didn’t achieve civil rights alone. Thousands of Black activists and organizers have suffered unspeakable violence and oppression for each step of progress over the years.

 

Although the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments abolished slavery and granted voting rights to all men (but not women) after the Civil War, racial discrimination, inequality, and voter suppression continued in earnest for at least another hundred years, and in many ways continue today. The Civil Rights acts of the 1960s happened only after decades of organizing and demands from Black people for equality.

 

Granting women the right to vote didn’t happen because President Woodrow Wilson suddenly thought women’s suffrage was the right thing to do.

 

Women didn’t gain the right to participate in our democracy for almost 150 years from the founding of this nation. Women organizers, led not just by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, but by many others — including Black women like Mary Church Terrell and Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin — organized and lobbied for decades for women’s rights. They used both marches and civil disobedience to demand action until the Nineteenth Amendment was finally ratified in 1920, giving women the right to vote.

 

Corporations and political leaders didn’t grant protections to workers because they suddenly thought the labor force deserved them.

 

Workers today have the labor movement to thank for many of the labor laws that protect them in the workplace. Unions and labor organizers demanded better working conditions through organizing, strikes, and protests. 

 

It is those who are denied their rights, those who suffer from inequality and injustice, who have organized and demanded change.

 

And the fight continues. As the wealthy and politically connected continue to try to maintain power, they work against fair labor practices, against universal voting rights, against racial equality, and against the freedoms too many of us take for granted.

 

Voting and participation in the democratic process is essential. We must pay attention to what our elected leaders are doing in our name. We must listen to the voices of the marginalized and those most impacted by our local, state, and federal governments. And those of us with the means to make our voices heard must use them to demand justice and equality.

 

It’s not enough to cast a vote and hope for the best. We must also participate in the decision making, organize with others when we can, hold our leaders accountable, and support those working hard to make the world a better place.

 

It is we who grant the power to our government. And it is we who must work together to demand the change in the world we want to see.

Election Day is August 2, - VOTE!

Election Day is August 2^, - VOTE!

by Ted Miller

(originally published in Tumbleweird August 2022)

 

Registered voters have already received their ballots for the August 2^nd Washington State primary election. On the ballot are the legislative candidates for state and federal offices, including those who will represent us in Congress. In Washington, the top two candidates move on to the general election, regardless of party affiliation.

 

With the divisiveness of today’s politics, it’s tempting to just avoid the entire process, mistakenly believing that our vote doesn’t matter anyway. 

 

But that’s the point of the negative rhetoric: to play on our emotions and make us feel like politics is so broken that the average voter no longer matters.

 

Your vote is more important than ever. Politicians who don’t care about the truth, who will say anything to stir up the electorate, are counting on our apathy to put themselves in positions of power.

 

There is little regulation on what a politician can say in campaign speech, and even less on what others can say about the candidates. Reports of disinformation and outright lies in campaign materials are already being reported in local media. 

 

Don’t believe everything you read. If you are able, research the candidates and make sure those you vote for align with your values and have a history to show they are more than just talk. To me, a candidate that spends all their time bashing their opponent tells me they aren’t focused on how to create a better community.

 

Do you want a representative who is working for all of us, or one who only wants to work against policies and programs that make our communities safer, more inclusive, and better for everyone?

 

Here’s what you need to know to make sure your vote counts:

 

●      If you aren’t registered yet, you can do so online at votewa.gov (before July 25) or in person up until election day, August 2, at your county voting location (Benton County: 2618 N Columbia Center Blvd, Kennewick; Franklin County 1016 N. 4^th Ave, Pasco).

●      Ballots are mailed to each registered voter automatically.

●      Verify your voter registration early at votewa.gov.

●      Remember to sign your ballot. Take out your driver’s license and sign it the same way since that is likely the signature your ballot will be compared with.

●      Include your phone number on the ballot. The auditor’s office will contact you by mail and/or by phone to try to resolve any problem with accepting your ballot.

●      Return your ballot in a place that is secure, either in one of the many ballot dropboxes located around the county (locations are at sos.wa.gov) before 8pm on election day or in a secure (with lock or slot) U.S. mailbox.

●      If you are mailing your ballot, mail it at least a week in advance. Remember that locally our mail goes to Spokane for processing.

●      Check the status of your ballot at votewa.gov after you have voted and make sure it has been received and then accepted. You have until the election is certified to resolve any issues with your ballot.

 

Make your voice heard. Don’t let others decide what’s best for our future.

 

Exercise your right to vote!

 

(For more on how elections work in Washington State, see my October 2020 Tumbleweird column Our Right to Vote.)

Where’s the Good Guy with a Gun?

Where’s the Good Guy with a Gun?

by Ted Miller

(originally posted in Tumbleweird July 2022)

 

At Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a gunman walked into the school and killed 19 children and two adults with an AR-15 style weapon while nearly two dozen armed police officers waited over an hour before engaging the shooter. (May 24, 2020)

 

Where’s the good guy with a gun?

 

At Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, a white gunman was welcomed to a bible study before taking out his weapons and killing nine Black churchgoers. (June 17, 2015)

 

Where’s the good guy with a gun?

 

At a music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, a gunman opened fire from his 32^nd floor hotel room, killing 60 people and wounding many more. (October 1, 2017)

 

Where’s the good guy with a gun?

 

At Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, a gunman killed six adults and twenty children between six and seven years old. (December 14, 2012)

 

Where’s the good guy with a gun?

 

At the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, a gunman killed 49 people and wounded 53 others before police killed him after a three-hour standoff. (June 11, 2016)

 

Where’s the good guy with a gun?

 

At Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, a gunman killed fourteen students and three staff members, and injured 17 others. (February 14, 2018)

 

Where’s the good guy with a gun?

 

Every month, seventy women are shot and killed by an intimate partner.

 

Where’s the good guy with a gun? 

 

Every year, 22,000 people die by suicide with a gun.

 

Where’s the good guy with a gun?

 

Last year, 45,026 people died from gun violence.

 

Where’s the good guy with a gun?

 

So far this year, there have been 270 mass shootings in just 167 days.

 

Where’s the good guy with a gun?

 

The good guy with a gun failed to stop any of these bad guys before someone was killed.

 

One week after those twenty school children were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary, Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association at the time, repeated a long held American myth that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

 

The reality is that it is exceedingly rare for an armed so-called ‘good guy’ to prevent an active shooter from killing or injuring someone. To the contrary, an armed civilian creates more chaos and often results in more death and injury, sometimes to himself and sometimes with his own weapon. 

 

So how can a good guy with a gun make a difference?

 

More guns with fewer restrictions will never reduce the pandemic of gun violence. Eliminating or severely restricting civilian gun ownership would be neither practical nor constitutional. Few Americans want to repeal the Second Amendment. But the vast majority do want limits on guns that will reduce the appalling number of gun violence victims. And that includes a majority of gun owners. 

 

Research reported by 97Percent, a bipartisan group of gun owners and non-gun owners working to reduce gun violence, shows that among gun owners:

·      87% support background checks for concealed carry permits

·      81% support red flag laws

·      79% support prohibiting a person from having a gun who is the subject of a current temporary restraining order for domestic violence

·      79% support prohibiting a person convicted of serious crimes as a juvenile from having a gun for 10 years

·      75% support universal background checks

 

Other commonsense gun laws that have been proposed include: increasing the minimum age for gun ownership, enacting enforceable gun storage laws, limiting ammunition purchases and magazine sizes, requiring training and licensing for gun owners, and banning assault weapons. But these proposals have less public support, and many are considered ‘non-starters’ for gun owners. So, we should start with demanding laws that do have broad support among all Americans.

 

Good guys with guns can speak up. Good guys with guns can lobby their legislatures for the laws that they support, laws that can reduce the rate of gun violence. Good guys with guns can support organizations like 97Percent and Gun Owners for Responsible Ownership.

 

As horrific as mass shootings are, they are a small percentage of the 45,000 gun deaths every year. Laws that limit access to weapons that may be used by individuals with a history of domestic violence or by those contemplating suicide can help reduce the overall rate of gun violence.

 

Statistics show that it is extremely unlikely that a good guy with a gun can prevent imminent gun violence with his weapon. But a good guy with a gun can make a difference by demanding our political leaders enact laws that will reduce gun violence in America. We can prevent thousands of needless deaths and injuries every year.

 

Where’s the good guy with a gun? He’s doing all he can to support change in our culture and our laws to reduce gun violence.

 

Be the good guy with a gun. Demand change.

 

Sources:  

everytown.org

97percent.us

marchforourlives.com

gunviolencearchive.org

Ignorance isn’t bliss

Ignorance isn’t bliss

by Ted Miller

(originally published in Tumbleweird May 2022)

 

There’s an old Twilight Zone episode in which a man is suddenly able to hear other people’s thoughts. In “Penny for Your Thoughts,” Hector B. Poole is at first confused, but then uses his new ability to try to prevent crimes he thinks his coworkers are planning, blackmail his boss for a new position, and end up with the girl of his dreams. In a typical Twilight Zone twist, what seems like a great advantage has unintended consequences. 

 

I don’t think I would really want to know what other people are thinking. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone reading my innermost thoughts. Although I believe strongly in the importance of honesty and integrity, some things are better left unsaid. My mother taught me that if I didn’t have anything nice to say, I shouldn’t say anything at all. And there is an old saying that one should never discuss politics or religion in polite company.

 

When I was serving on active duty in the Navy, we were strongly encouraged to vote (for me, it was always through an absentee ballot) but discouraged from discussing politics. In fact, political activity for anyone serving in the military is severely limited. Consequently, my perspective was that we didn’t have to talk about politics. A good citizen researched the candidates and the issues on their own and voted according to what they felt was best for their community and the nation. 

 

Our democracy depends upon participation by the people. And I always believed that through the ballot box, our system would, in the end, result in a better world. I felt that political differences were just varying takes on how to achieve what was best for the country and its citizens — that collectively, to paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the electorate would help bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice.

 

Like those of us in the military, elected officials all take an oath to support and defend the Constitution. To me, political speech was all about hearing competing ideas to find a balance of when the government should regulate something and when government should get out of the way. But I was a bit naïve in my belief that the system of checks and balances would always protect our form of government. 

 

There have always been those who use the government for their own personal gain. Corporations and the wealthy have worked for decades to dismantle the programs put in place after the Great Depression that regulated business, provided a social safety net, and built the infrastructure that improved the lives of the average American. Since the early 1950s, there has been a concerted effort to convince people that, as Ronald Reagan put it, “government is not a solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

 

In the 1990s, Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch’s media companies demonized mainstream news as leftist, socialist, and anti-American. And those sustained efforts to undermine the trust in media have been effective. Attacks on objective truth have become so common that in many respects, we are a nation divided into alternate realities of alternative facts. 

 

Politicians — far-right Republicans in particular — have become so effective at disinformation and bending the truth that, despite the lack of any credible evidence, a majority of Republicans still believe the Big Lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. The concerted effort to overturn the election that led to the insurrection on January 6, 2021, and the attempts since then to hide the truth of what happened, are a direct attack on our constitutional form of government. 

 

The echo chamber of social media has shown me that the veneer of polite conversation which avoids talk of politics and religion masked the depth and extent of our political divide. Although it is certainly more complex than just Republicans versus Democrats, the growing belief of so many that the other side is the enemy means that we can no longer work together for the common good. It is no wonder that Congress is so dysfunctional, and that any significant legislation is nearly impossible to achieve.

 

The pledge of allegiance describes our nation as indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. But the battle for truth and power shows that we are not as indivisible as we think. The rise of authoritarianism, the push for a single party autocracy, the attack on fair elections, and restrictions on the right to vote are all direct threats to our democratic republic.

 

So, what can be done to counter this threat? I recognize the dangers of demagoguery and disinformation, but I still believe in the power of free speech and open debate. Our First Amendment protections can be used to restore objective truth. We can fight disinformation with fact checks, use tools to evaluate media bias, and call out hateful and divisive rhetoric when we see it.

 

But the power of confirmation bias, echo chamber media, and click-bait algorithms will continue to push us apart. The monetization of social media has created some of the wealthiest companies in America by driving a social wedge through America. Perhaps the power of social media could also be used to counter the spread of disinformation.

 

A coordinated effort of both private sector and government actions to disincentivize the spread of conspiracy theories and disinformation could turn around this trend. Some work has already been done to de-platform the worst offenders that spread lies and promote anti-government violence. Disinformation can be flagged. Action can be taken against disinformation similar to the way we hold companies accountable for lying about the products they sell. Sources of disinformation can be identified and foreign influence through social media can be regulated. And all of this can be done without compromising our freedoms under the first amendment.

 

Some of my friends have abandoned social media because of the toxic environment it can become. I respect that. I have tried to limit my own use of social media. But I appreciate that I can also see what others are thinking and posting, and I can see first-hand how divisive the comments can become. 

 

I don’t have to read minds to understand how people are thinking and I can see the effects of the polarizing rhetoric on our nation.

 

I don’t want to suppress the speech of those who see the world differently. I want to listen to those who may have a better idea of the role government should play in our lives. 

 

I want to live in a world where our political speech and debate are based on facts and objective truth. 

 

Is that still possible?

Collateral Killing

Collateral Killing

by Ted Miller

(originally published in Tumbleweird March 2022)

 

When is it acceptable to kill innocent people during a law enforcement action? What crimes are so egregious that the price of enforcement is the death of someone not even involved in the crime?

 

Imagine this: You are in bed asleep, your significant other at your side. You are suddenly jolted awake by what sounds like someone breaking down your front door, lots of indecipherable yelling, and the sound of several men in plain clothes screaming as they forcibly enter your home. You grab your gun, which you keep near you just in case something like this happens. You see shadows and weapons pointed at you and your significant other. Fearing for your life, you fire a warning shot. A rain of bullets erupts. Your significant other falls to your side and dies in your arms.

 

In the midst of your grief and confusion, a man claiming to be a police officer violently grabs you, handcuffs you, and drags you outside.

 

Later, you will be accused of resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer, and blamed for the death of your significant other.

 

Neither you nor your significant other was the person the police were looking for.

 

And all of this was completely legal. 

 

The scenario I just described was what Kenneth Walker experienced on the morning of March 13, 2020 in Louisville, Kentucky. His girlfriend, who died in his arms, was Breonna Taylor, an EMT and Emergency Room technician. 

 

The police were executing what is known as a no-knock warrant in search of evidence related to a drug crime Taylor and Walker were not connected to. 

 

Breonna Taylor was killed in a search for evidence of a crime for which neither she nor her boyfriend was a suspect.

 

No-knock warrants are inherently dangerous for both the police and the occupants of the residence being raided. They are designed to create confusion and chaos. And in that confusion and chaos, innocent people too often get hurt.

 

No physical evidence is worth risking someone’s life to obtain. 

 

On February 2, 2022 in Minneapolis, Amir Locke was asleep on the couch when police officers executed a no-knock entry. In the confusion and chaos, Locke jumped up with his legally owned gun in his hand. 

 

Seven seconds after entering the apartment, Amir Locke was shot dead by police. Seven seconds. Not enough time to even say his name or understand what was happening. The officer that killed him made a snap decision and opened fire without asking questions.

 

Again, Locke was not the target of the raid. The police were looking for Locke’s cousin in connection with a recent homicide. The cousin was not present with Locke.

 

Was the killing of Amir Locke justified because his cousin was suspected of murder? Was his killing justified because he had a legally owned gun in his hand? Possessing a legally owned weapon in your own home is not a capital offense. Defending yourself from an intruder is often lauded in our country, but not if the intrusion is an unexpected violent entry by the police.

 

How could Amir Locke or Kenneth Walker have possibly known what was happening?

 

It’s past time to reassess police tactics that put both the police and innocent civilians at risk. In these two cases, and in hundreds of others around the country, intentionally creating a dangerous situation to serve a warrant was not worth the risk. These were not hostage situations, or cases where a violent individual was threatening to harm themselves or others.

 

There are other ways to execute a warrant, to find evidence, or to locate a suspect. 

 

St. Paul, sister city to Minneapolis, hasn’t executed a no-knock warrant since 2016. The mayor of Minneapolis promised to reform the practice after the Breonna Taylor case and the murder of George Floyd by police. But that promise didn’t save Amir Locke.

 

Four states have banned the practice of no-knock warrants:  Florida, Oregon, Connecticut, and Virginia. (Peter Nickeas, CNN, “There's a growing consensus in law enforcement over no-knock warrants: The risks outweigh the rewards,” February 12, 2022.) Other states have severely limited the practice to very narrow circumstances.

 

Too many people are killed at the hands of police, and many of them are not involved in a crime. Even one innocent life taken is unacceptable. 

 

Data compiled by the Washington Post shows that police in the United States kill 1000 people every year. And, like Breonna Taylor and Amir Locke, those killed are disproportionately Black or Hispanic. (Washington Post, “Fatal Force” database, as of February 9, 2022.) Too many are innocent people.

 

The relationship between the police and the communities they serve needs to improve. There are ways to enforce the law and support the justice system with less risk and fewer collateral deaths. 

 

We must demand police reforms that will reduce or eliminate collateral killings. 

 

Let’s start by banning no-knock warrants.

How Can We Eliminate Poverty?

How Can We Eliminate Poverty?

by Ted Miller

(originally published in Tumbleweird February 2022)

 

Have you ever responded to a charity request to support something you believed in? How about a personal request to help someone in need? Have you donated to a homeless shelter, a local food bank, or one of those Facebook requests to help pay for unexpected medical bills? 

 

I think most of us have a natural desire to help others. According to the National Philanthropic Trust (nptrust.org), individual Americans gave over $470 billion to charitable organizations in 2020. All that charitable giving may help, but it isn’t helping enough. 

 

Almost 12 million children in the United States — one in six — live in poverty, more than most other developed nations. As I wrote in my January 2020 column, philanthropy is a terrible way to fight poverty. In spite of America’s generous giving, philanthropy does not do enough to feed the hungry, heal the sick, or house the homeless. Twelve percent of Americans live below the poverty line, and 18.5 million of them are in deep poverty with a household income of less than half the poverty threshold (census.gov). Thirty million people still lack health insurance. One in eight Americans are food insecure. Half a million are homeless.

 

But it doesn’t have to be this way. What if together we could do something to end poverty in America? Something more effective and efficient than responding to a charity request or a Facebook post with a few dollars?

 

Last year, the American Rescue Plan Act enhanced and expanded the child tax credit program, providing monthly payments to families with children. The program reduced child poverty by more than 40%. According to studies summarized by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, low-income families overwhelmingly used that money to pay for food, utilities, housing, school supplies, and medicine. In all, 36 million families received benefits from the expanded child tax credit program.

 

Those payments expired in December, putting millions of children back below the poverty line. The tax credit payments would have been continued in the Build Back Better legislation passed by the House, but that bill has so far failed to pass in the Senate. The help that so many families desperately needed suddenly stopped.

 

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, has received most of the blame for objecting to the child tax credits. Parroting conservative talking points of the last 40 years, Senator Manchin is concerned that the poor will use that money on drugs or non-essential luxuries and that the payments will make them not want to work. Ronald Reagan’s ‘welfare queen’ tropes come to mind. This perspective blames the poor for being poor while ignoring the systems that prevent the poor from pulling themselves out of poverty by their own bootstraps. 

 

But putting all the blame for this failure on Senator Manchin is misplaced. He is only one of one hundred senators. None of the fifty Republican senators support continuing the expanded child tax credit, much less any other social programs to help Americans in need.  

 

Every year, Congress debates whether the poor are deserving of the help they receive. Months of arguing and negotiating leads to watered down bills that fail to get at the root cause of the problem. As a society, we seem to be afraid that somehow our tax dollars are going to be given to someone who doesn’t deserve them. Why don’t we have that same hesitancy when it comes to charity? Do you make sure that everyone who shows up to your local food bank has a job before you donate or volunteer? Before you decide to give, do you require that your local homeless shelter turn away drug addicts and the unemployed?

 

This idea that the poor have to earn the help they receive hurts all of us. Children who grow up in poverty, who suffer from inadequate nutrition, who don’t get an education, are impacted for life. Eliminating this suffering is not only the right thing to do; it will also improve our society and our economy. Reducing poverty is an investment in our future.

 

The expanded child tax credits cost about $100 billion per year. It has been estimated that we could eliminate poverty in America with less than $200 billion per year. 

 

Last month Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act with overwhelming bipartisan support. This so-called ‘must pass’ legislation passed in the House 316–113 and in the Senate 88–11, authorizing $768 billion dollars for fiscal year 2022, $24 billion more than the president requested. There was very little debate on whether this amount of spending was truly necessary. No argument about whether the billions given to huge defense contractors for weapons systems was a good investment. No discussion about how to pay for those systems. 

 

I’m not saying we don’t need a military or that defense spending is unnecessary. But where is the debate on balancing the needs for defense with the needs for taking care of our citizens? Why is it that we can find the money to build new weapons systems that we don’t need, but we can’t afford to lift children out of poverty?

 

We’ve somehow been convinced that the government is the problem, not the solution. And so, our government — those whom we elect to make these decisions about priorities and who deserves help — continue to vote in the interests of corporations and the wealthy while telling the rest of us to help ourselves. 

 

We can do better.

Taking the Law into Our Own Hands

Taking the Law into Our Own Hands

by Ted Miller

(originally published in Tumbleweird January 2021)

 

On November 1, 2021, the Spokane Police Department published a statement that a murder suspect had been arrested after the decomposing body of a 19-year-old man had been found in the trunk of a car.

 

News reports gave a strong implication that the murder was somehow justified, but I wanted to read the original police post. Here are some excerpts:

 

On 10-22-21 SPD patrol officers responded to [a report of] an abandoned vehicle with a foul odor emanating from it. … SPD officers verified human remains were contained within the vehicle.

 

The victim was identified as a 19-year-old male, and on 10-29-21, 60-year-old John Eisenman was arrested for 1^stdegree murder. 

 

In October 2020 Eisenman learned his juvenile daughter was allegedly sold to a sex-trafficking organization in the Seattle area. Eisenman obtained information his daughter’s boyfriend (the deceased) may have been the one responsible for her sale. 

 

In November 2020, Eisenman [learned where the victim would be and] abducted the victim, tying him up and placing him in the trunk of a vehicle. Eisenman subsequently assaulted the victim by hitting him in the head with a cinder block and then stabbed him repeatedly, causing his death. Eisenman drove the vehicle to a remote area … and abandoned the car with the body still inside. The vehicle … was moved in October 2021 … with the body still in the trunk. Individuals … rummaging through the car … made the gruesome discovery. 

 

This story is disturbing on so many levels. I can only imagine how I would feel if I thought my daughter had been abducted and trafficked. The vast majority of the several thousand comments on that SPD post praised the dad and called him a hero. There were calls to set up a GoFundMe to pay legal fees, which quickly raised over $20,000. “He did a public service,” said one. “Justifiable homicide,” said another. Many ‘volunteered’ to serve on his jury, anxious to acquit. 

 

But there was no evidence that the victim was actually guilty of what the father suspected.

 

One commenter tried to bring reason into the conversation. Acknowledging the father’s rage, the commenter then said, “But it’s not his responsibility to take it upon himself to kill someone that hasn’t been accused of a crime much less arrested and charged. Vigilantism isn’t what a civil society is built upon.”

 

There were hundreds of angry replies to that comment, many reiterating that the father was a hero and that they would have done the same thing. But I noticed many of the comments also reflected a deep distrust of our justice system. “We no longer live in a civil society,” said one. “We live in the ruins of one. If you don't secure justice, no one will.”

 

The idea behind these comments was that the woke liberals, ineffective District Attorneys, corrupt judges, and incompetent police would never hold the 19-year-old boyfriend accountable for what the father accused him of committing. So, obviously, the boy deserved to be hunted down and murdered. 

 

The United States has a long history of vigilantism. Before there were organized police departments, private citizens and legally deputized posses made citizen arrests. Slave patrols and lynch mobs upheld white supremacy, capturing and lynching Black people for so much as a whisper of an offense against a white person. Today, so called ‘stand your ground’ laws support the idea of vigilantism, giving private citizens — with no training on rules regarding the use of deadly force — legal authority to shoot first and ask questions later.

 

Popular culture celebrates vigilantism. Superheroes like Batman, serial killers like Dexter, and characters like Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver) are considered heroes with the idea that the system won’t hold the bad guys accountable, and that extra-judiciary means are required to get justice. 

 

Our justice system is indeed flawed. Guilty people do sometimes get away with murder, but innocent people are also convicted of crimes they didn’t commit, sentenced to years in prison, and in some cases executed before they can prove their innocence. The system isn’t perfect, but at least it has checks and balances to try to get it right. 

 

William Blackstone, an English jurist in the 18^th century, said: “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” This idea of innocence until proven guilty is at the foundation of our legal system. The Constitution, particularly the fourth and fifth amendments, give us the rights that uphold this principle.

 

A vigilante mob mentality undermines those rights and every principle of justice we have. 

 

As I was preparing this column, I looked to see if there had been any follow-up to the Spokane arrest of the man who murdered his daughter’s boyfriend. I was curious whether any evidence of the boyfriend’s alleged sex trafficking had been found.

 

The Spokesman Review reported that “investigators say they have no ‘independent and verifiable facts’ that a 20-year-old man found dead in a car trunk in October had sex trafficked his girlfriend as her father, the confessed killer, has claimed. Furthermore, police allege John Eisenman, 60, told investigators he was high on methamphetamine when he killed Andrew Sorensen last year.” *

 

Andrew Sorensen, a young man just out of high school, was murdered by a vigilante for a crime that hadn’t even been committed. And yet thousands of people across the country were ready to give his murderer a medal, pay for his legal fees, and acquit him of any crime. Because they are so cynical about our judicial system, they are ready to throw away 250 years of legal precedent designed to prevent uninformed citizens from wrongfully killing an innocent man. 

 

This breakdown in the faith in our legal and judicial system is frightening. We are headed to anarchy and vigilante mobs ‘taking the law into their own hands’ — using violence and violating the constitutional rights of fellow citizens to enact their own misguided vision of ‘justice’. We’ve seen it recently in Kenosha, WI; Brunswick, GA; the U.S. Capitol Building; and right here in the Tri-Cities.

 

When a society no longer trusts that the law will be upheld, the laws no longer have any meaning. 

 

I don’t want to live in a lawless society. Do you?

 

* The Spokesman Review, Dec. 2, 2021, “Police: No Evidence that man killed by girlfriend’s father was in involved in sex trafficking; suspect high on meth.”