Support of loving community stronger than any hateful voice
We think of murder in a small town as a loss of innocence, but it isn’t exactly that.
A few weeks ago two bad guys slithered into Dixon in the middle of the night and killed three beloved neighbors, friends and family members. We were sleeping, at least those of us not burdened with restlessness or the need to close an irrigation ditch in the middle of the night.
Did I know any of the victims? Sure, a little. Do I know their families? Sure.
I appreciate that they greet me with cheerful friendliness. I appreciate that they model a kind acceptance that comes from those with clean lives and a clear conscience. Or maybe the clear conscience that I perceive in the majority of community members is actually conscience that gets oxygenated each time we acquiesce to the imperfections that muddy our own lives.
This triple homicide in a small village was not a murder of innocence. We’ve known our share of tragedy.
In fact, adversity has always lived here. We are reminded of the harshness the ancestors endured each time we pass a crumbling adobe wall or a dry acequia bed.
A recent community healing meeting revived memories of tragic, unexpected violence from decades past as well as those events that happened last year. We were reminded that we have survived tragedy before, and we will survive again, always rising as a stronger, more lovingly unified community.
One of the victims, Abraham Martinez, was my relative. When he was the victim of senseless violence, I could own up to it easily, despite his weakness for drugs.
Now he is known as the deceased victim whose brother and father are charged with looting the crime scene before authorities arrived. Am I so eager to claim them? Yes, of course.
Each of them, like Abe, is big-hearted, even chivalrous. They wanted to keep clean, oxygenate the conscience, until this set of tragic, misguided, and yes, criminal, circumstances evolved. Perhaps we can say something similar about every person involved: the buddies who patronized the house, the neighbors who felt helpless to change things and the family members, up in arms, hearts down to their knees.
John Powell was one of the bad guys who returned to Dixon intent on doing harm. I met him three weeks earlier.
He was an acquaintance of an acquaintance of a friend, willing to earn a little money moving a piano that day. He was in my home. I shook his hand. I smiled at him. I expressed my gratitude and gave him a few more dollars even though he’d already been paid. Knowing nothing about him, I treated him as an upstanding citizen. I can’t explain why he didn’t pass on that kindness instead.
People of the Embudo Valley don’t choose smalltown life because we choose to live in ignorance. We choose it for the simplicity and community, the art and agriculture. And we choose the freedom this cocooned valley allows us to live truer to our nature, good but not perfect.
At the community meeting, I pleaded for people to not answer ugliness with ugliness. I asked those present to be the voice of kindness within their smaller organizations.
For a time, I feared that someone would answer violence with violence. Now I recognize that we are all living the best we can, in the process of oxygenating body, mind and soul and that the support of our loving community is stronger than any single hateful voice.