Too many Americans have no regard for others’ safety

Two recent articles in the Sun- Times struck me as incredibly shocking. On Sunday, an article reported our president is considering a pardon for boxer Jack Johnson, convicted of accompanying a white woman across state lines under Jim Crow law. While this was an egregious conviction over 100 years ago, I wonder: Why now?

Mr. Trump showed no mercy toward the Central Park Five, black youths wrongfully convicted and released after years of confinement, and he never rescinded his call for bringing back the death penalty for “muggers and murderers,” nor apologized. I am pretty sure that he doesn’t know that Malcolm Little— later Malcolm X— was convicted under a similar law and incarcerated. Nor does he show any compassion for thousands of people, mostly black and Latino men in prison wrongly accused of minor drug possession of marijuana, thousands disenfranchised of their vote after serving prison times, let alone the large number of people of all colors, ages and sexual orientations murdered by what used to be illegal assault weapons.

The second article, in Monday’s paper, reported on the massacre at a Waffle House in Tennessee by aman who had been detained outside the White House with a semiautomatic weapon. This man was released, although he was suspected of mental illness, according to the Nashville Police Chief, and his seized weapons released to his father, who promised ( falsely) that he wouldn’t allow his son access to them. The man was able to kill four people before being subdued by a customer in the restaurant.

Both these stories reflect an orchestrated disregard on the part of too many Americans for human life and safety. John Obeda, Andersonville