Doing battle against injustice

In any given week, there is one story that stands out among the others.

This week was not at all like that. God and the furies of social media gave us narratives that, one after the other, bombarded the collective conscience with more shock and awe than the rockets launched last Friday night against the monster who poisoned his own children.

There was, of course, that shower of angry missiles aimed at Syria’s second generation dictator, a doctor who perverted his medical training to kill his countrymen.

For the second time in a year, Donald Trump did what others before him refused to do, taking the red line Assad had breached and choking him with it.

Some have argued that the attacks were not enough to do real damage, and others have argued that they were illegitimate acts from an illegitimate leader.

To me, they were a sign that however hobbled and reduced we might appear to enemies both foreign and domestic, the United States can still raise a mighty roar against injustice.

And as I considered events this week, I saw an overriding theme: Injustice exists, but the measure of our humanity lies in how we stare it down, in measures great or small.

Two black men were arrested when they refused to leave a coffee shop. Some thought they should have been arrested, some others thought that the color of their skin was the real reason they were handcuffed since witnesses confirmed that white customers had been left alone to loiter and enjoy the easy leisure of a Rittenhouse Square afternoon.

Others still thought that the story was an overreaction.

There is a difference between playing the race card and pointing out, through the dignity of two black men harassed and embarrassed in a quiet coffee shop, that Rosa Parks is still fighting for that seat at the front of the bus.

Pennsylvania legislators ignored the demands of women who see the chimeric right to abortion evaporating with each incremental advance in science and common sense, and passed a bill that would criminalize the destruction of fetuses diagnosed with or suspected of having an extra chromosome.

In casting their votes to end the de facto purge of children with Down Syndrome, a mighty majority of men and women in Harrisburg stood up to the utilitarian special interests who fail to grasp the insidious implications of their crusade to allow expectant mothers to be the ultimate arbiters of the value of human life.

A family in New Jersey struggled to understand why their beloved dog had been taken from them with no explanation and little notice.

The dog, Abal, was more than a cute and furry distraction for kids who had finished their homework.

The dog was one of them, as dogs always are, becoming as integral to the health and happiness of parents and children as their own welfare.

Abal was human in all respects except his DNA.

When he was taken away, mother Nicole refused to accept the cruelty of the move, and sent out a message to the public.

And the public answered, on social media, in print, on the radio, on television, and the message spread to countries where the love story between the Galanti family and their pet was translated into many different languages.

But the underlying message that you cannot allow bureaucrats to shatter your happiness to satisfy some undefined “bottom line” didn’t need translation.

And on a more personal note, I experienced the grace that comes from hearing the words “your asylum case is granted.”

My client had seen her husband gunned down in front of her eyes, was shot in the same attack, testified against his murderers, and was hounded by those gangsters (even as they were locked away in supposedly secure prisons) until she was forced to flee Honduras.

The journey took a month, across borders and under the fire of a Central American sun. She begged a judge to let her live in peace.

And that judge read the law correctly, with coherence and compassion, and gave her the keys to the future with a simple word, “granted.”

Tyrants warned, racism condemned, life protected, a family made whole. And a safe haven guaranteed. The imperfect, glorious arc of justice etched in actions great and small.