Ahhh, Small Town Living

Last night we went to our favorite Mexican restaurant. As we arrived and were seated, another patron kept squinting at us in a kind of unfriendly way. At first I thought she was just being rude, but I quickly figured out she was trying to figure out who we were. How sad, I thought, she's all alone at the restaurant.

Then the staff of the restaurant began to try to gently escort her out the door. She was shuffling her feet and very unsteady. How really sad, I thought - she's obviously got a vision problem and maybe some other health concerns. And how nice that they are helping her get to her car. At about this point I began to worry about how she had GOTTEN to the restaurant with these medical conditions. Something was not adding up.

Then, the staff of the restaurant went to a neighboring table, where two couples, acquaintances of ours, were eating, and asked the men something in a quiet voice. The men got up, and one cheerfully went to the woman to offer her a ride home in her car while the other guy followed in his car. How nice, I thought. These guys are bailing out this poor, blind, shuffling (young) woman so she can get home.

As soon as it was appropriate to do so ("appropriate" in small-town lingo being approximately four seconds after the door is shut behind the woman and the two men), I asked the wives what the story was. And here it is:

Apparently the woman got so drunk from the one Long Island iced tea she ordered while waiting for her to-do order that she was unsafe to drive home, and the staff at the Mexican restaurant would not let her drive herself home. (I suspect either an underlying medical condition, a contraindication with prescription drugs, or that the woman had been drinking before she got to the restaurant, but that's really beside the point.)

It turns out that one of the guys, C, was celebrating his birthday when he got conscripted to this duty! What a nice guy! Also, because he's Hispanic, the woman he drove home assumed he was the owner of the restaurant - but at least she said nice things. *sigh* C was very gracious at all the appalling, vaguely racist things she said during the drive home. *double sigh* He also told us that she had trouble a) getting to the street she lived on, and b) identifying her house once they were on the correct street.

This tells me a number of things: 1. Have a designated driver if you are going to drink anything at Casa de Oro (or anywhere, really). 2. The staff at Casa de Oro will not let you drive home if you are drunk. They may ask other patrons to help, but they will make sure that you and your car get home safely. 3. Good people will help out drunk people in this small town - even if they are perfect strangers to one another. 4. Racism, benign though it might have been in this case, is still alive and well (not that we didn't know that already). 5. When you do good deeds, they become funny stories.

Happy birthday, C!!! Hope it got better and better as the night went on!

Bill Richardson Is My Hero...

...but I am definitely over my crush on him. (That's because of the van dyke, which I think has mercifully been shaved by now). He's my hero because when he came to my small town before the caucuses, he said that he supported civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender folk. You don't really hear too much of that where I live, unless you're at church and I'm preaching on the subject. So yeah, I was his big cheerleader in our county...for all the good it did.

And now, he's signed a bill abolishing the death penalty in New Mexico. Thank you, Gov. Richardson! His thoughtful and measured words in the press release accompanying the signing were also outstanding. He acknowledges the difficulty in the decision, how he has struggled and evolved on the issue, and he gives credit to people who believe differently than he does. I admit it - I'm still a sucker for his rhetoric (though I'm perfectly happy to the the POTUS that we do!).

Gov. Richardson raises two issues around the death penalty that have shaped my civil/legal opposition to it: the possibility of executing an innocent person, and the disproportionate way that it is applied to people of color, especially poor people of color. I learned growing up that our legal system believed that it was better to let one hundred guilty people go free than it was to jail one innocent person, and for a long time I was naive enough to believe we meant that. I no longer believe we live by that ideal, but I steadfastly believe it's an American value well-worth returning to.* When an innocent person is executed, you don't get to go back and say, "Ooops, sorry, we got the wrong guy."

Also, when I see the atrocious way that poor people and people of color are treated in our legal system, it makes me want to puke. (Frankly, the way people of color are treated in the media's reporting on legal issues makes me want to puke, too. Just try to remember the last time you saw a white person's mugshot lead the evening news, or be on the front page, above the fold. Bet you saw a black person's mugshot within the last two days, either on TV or in the paper.) DA's often cut deals with white defendants, but bring the full weight of the law down on black ones. Often, a white defendant is said to have made an error in judgment, but a black defendant is just a thug. Ineffective counsel is appointed, and they compound the trouble.

Look at the case of Dominique Green - a microcosm for all that can go wrong. The kid did not pull the trigger, but he still was executed. Oh, and did you know that the white people involved in the shooting - including the one who ACTUALLY COMMITTED THE MURDER - all got off? And that the victim's family asked for him NOT to be executed?! Listen to author Thomas Cahill discuss the case on NPR's "Tell Me More." This may be one case, but it represents a system badly out of whack.

My religious opposition to the death penalty, in addition to the religious aspects of the two above-mentioned reason, is shaped a lot by Augustine (don't laugh, Luis or Jocelyn!), who believed that execution robbed the person of the possibility of repenting of their crime and coming to experience God's forgiveness (and perhaps the forgiveness of the victim and/or victim's family).

Also, Ta-Nehisi has a great post relating to the death penalty, conservatives and small government, which I urge you to mull over. I think it will be the subject of my next post.

* Sorry to end the sentence with a preposition, grammar police.