My experiences, thoughts and their expression: mi vida

I was being somewhat on edge given that somewhere I read this week that Troy Davis' case was being reviewed by the US Supreme Court, and that were they not to 'see' the case ('hear' the case?)...then it was up to the DA at the County in Georgia that is prosecuting Mr. Davis. In other words, the last resort would be the individual that is , has been, going all out to get the death penalty in this case. From a point of view, it is a special and interesting outcome: the person that started the whole thing, the office that went all the way out to condemn, after the case was deflected by multiple courts and agencies, authorities, government, elected officials, State Supreme Court members, etc., etc., is 'stuck' with the final say, the final word in a case that has come to be seen all over the world. The responsibility would not be 'rescued' from the originator: the 'responsible' party would have nowhere to go but to face the decision the system ha...

Next Sunday, the nation will be celebrating a huge occasion: Father's Day...or is it - Fathers' Day...? Hundreds, thousands, millions of parents will celebrate then. Many of that number will be 'honored' in some way: from very simple "I love you's" uttered by a child grabbing 'daddy's' fingers and looking straight up waiting to be reached to and held, to community gatherings in the local restaurant, to great - starchy, maybe - celebrations and speeches, honoring folks that hold a meaningful role in societal circles. For a few hours, maybe for just a moment in some cases, those men will be the center of attention in a special way. That attention will not be their lives' 'usual' one conveying yet 'one more responsibility', one more 'to-do'. It will be one of gratefulness, of appreciation, of love: a situation possibly infrequent and rather uncomfortable in many cases. "It was the natural thing to do!; nothing less...

What are we going to do...as a society? I was impressed by a note written in today's AJC by Azadeh Shahshahani regarding the incarceration of immigrants, and their rate of death under ICE's imprisonment operations. ( http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2009/06/11/shahshahanied_0611.html ) Azadeh writes well: facts, logic, consequences, challenges and possibilities are all there - all included. The sadness of the situation oozes out of her words, for me. Imagine dying under incarceration, being 'an illegal', incommunicated, vilified, cut-off from the world, at the mercy of a jailer and those jailed around you. Azadeh becomes that voice that just as Philip Alston , the UN Expert on Extrajudicial killings , call for " greater transparency and swift and public investigations for deaths in immigration detention ". Who else will care for those dying under a commercial, for profit - "the-longer-I_hold-you-here-the-more-money-we-make" - incar...