Sunday, December 02, 2012

Compassion & Cameras

Citizens are Winning the Battle over Cops and Cameras | The Smirking Chimp
...Ms Foster reported on her Facebook page that Officer DePrimo told the man, “I have these size 12 boots for you, they are all-weather. Let’s put them on and take care of you.” He, then, helped the man put on his socks and the new warm boots.

Truth be told, this kind of unsung compassion goes on all the time. Teachers are notorious for spending their own money and time to buy poor, needy kids things not provided by the school system -- even breakfast. Similarly, people in a range of service professions spend their own resources to help people ignored by cold-blooded institutions. US military personnel do it all the time as they serve in foreign locales. I saw it in Viet Nam when I was there as a kid with my fellow soldiers, all of us, in my view, serving the larger, destructive institution of American imperialism.

To me, such cases are examples of bottom-up decency in a world too often overwhelmed by top-down institutional callousness...

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