11. Be a Beacon of Positive Change

Recently, I was asked to sign & pass on this petition (I am not signing it.):

In February 1993 in England , a young boy of 3 was taken from a Liverpool shopping
Centre by two 10-year-old boys. Jamie Bulger walked away from his mother for only a second, Jon Venables took his hand and led him out of the mall with his friend Robert Thompson. They took Jamie on a walk for over 2 and a half miles; they stopped at a railway track where they brutally kicked him, threw stones at him, rubbed paint in his eyes, pushed batteries up his anus and cut his fingers off with scissors. Other mutilations were inflicted but not reported in the press.

What these two boys did was so horrendous that Jamie's mother was forbidden to identify his body. They then left his beaten small body on railway tracks so a train could run him over to hide the mess they had created. These two boys, even being boys,understood what they did was wrong, hence trying to make it look like an accident.

Lady Justice Butler-Sloss has awarded the two boys ( now men ), anonymity for the rest of their lives when they leave custody with new identities. They will also leave custody early only serving just over half of their sentence. They are being relocated to Australia to live out the rest of their lives. They disgustingly and
violently took Jamie's life away and in return they each get a new life!

Please.... If you feel as strongly as we do, (And if you haven't already signed this petition ) that This is a grave Miscarriage of justice - Hit the forward button and add your name at the end, and send it to everyone you can !


Please take a few seconds to forward it to your mail list & don't forget to add your name to the list.Thank you. (End of petition)


....Before I get to what I really want to discuss, let me go off on a tangent here for a minute about two things:

1. If someone is really your friend and you genuinely want to pass on some information you think is vital, PLEASE check its veracity before spamming your friend's email inbox with CRAP. I am begging you not to simply "copy, paste, & forward" like a robot because you

a) want to be a good person/friend

b) are so superstitous you really think you'll have bad luck for seven years if you don't forward some piece of rancid effluvium to all your "friends" in the next seven seconds

c) don't have the capacity to think for yourself

d) would rather waste time mindlessly forwarding nonsense than take three seconds on Google to discover whether or not the tripe you're spamming your friends with is actually timely or even valid and/or accurate. Folks, let me tell you about two REALLY handy websites: www.snopes.com will tell you whether that heartwrenching story is a hoax or not and www.wikipedia.com will give you a lot more credible information. You might wanna check your facts before you embarrass yourself/reveal your incompetence (for example, no batteries were pushed into the anus of Jamie Bulger).

Seriously, I recieve at least one "forward" a day that is either a hoax or inaccurate. Think about what you're sending.

That brings me to number 2.

2. If you decide that the information IS pertinent and IS NOT a hoax, the next step you might want to take is to make sure your diatribe is legible and uses at least passing grammar and spelling. We have had tools for this for many years, primarily "school". You might want to pay attention. Now, I don't expect perfection (Lord knows I'm far from it myself), but there is often so many mistakes I can barely decipher the intended message...for example, I had to edit the above for sentence structure and grammar to make it legible, and it's still not perfect. Please try harder. Often, the messages are so illegible that I'm already offended and I haven't even addressed the content.

Speaking of content, now that I've got those first two issues out of the way, let's go back to the subject of the erstwhile "petition"...

Although the boys' actions were reprehensible, is it realistic or reasonable that repercussions of decisions made by 10 year olds should ruin their whole lives? That would mean the destruction of three lives instead of just one. Do you really think TEN year olds are capable of rational thought?Everyone has made mistakes in life. I know I am not the only person who has changed and grown radically from youth to adulthood. Do you not think these boys have learned and been reprimanded? And if by some cahnce they are truly psychotic sociopaths, do you not think this will be picked up on during their incarceration?

Look at the date: February 1993. Those ten year old boys are now twenty-eight. I am sure they have been subjected to rigorous psychological examination and therapy. But like a good citizen, my first thought was to check my facts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger and http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/bulger.asp with updates.

Turns out these boys were sentenced long ago and this petition is very outdated. It can only be circulating now because there is an effort out to open a learning center in Merseyside, where this event took place, that will be a safe place for victims of bullying.

This of course begs the question for me of why we need to creat a "safe place from bullying", should not we stop bullying from occurring, address it where it happens, and negate the need for these centers? Why must we continually victimize our children? Why must parents with bullied children remove the children from normal schools while bullies are permitted their usual routines? The bullies are the ones who need our help and forgiveness, as they will be the ones who have much more serious problems, often being abused themselves. And if they are not being abused, then bullying is a sure sign of an antisocial or sociopathic personality. Should we wait until the bully becomes a killer before we try to help him control his feelings, thoughts, or actions?

The petition refers to "a grave miscarriage of justice" when in fact, the perpetrators were sentenced and served the maximum punishment allowed due to their age and circumstances. Any further punitive actions would not be legal. Lady Justice Butler-Schloss granted the convicts new identities to protect them from vigilante actions, such as those implied by this petition, because, as she put it; "they have the right of all citizens to protection under the law". If you do not agree with the law, work to change it, but you cannot punish someone more than the law allows. It seems as if she was not only protecting the convicts from further unlawful persecution by the citizenry, but also protecting the citizens from themselves, for once a society seeks to begin murdering the murderer, then do they not themselves become murderes? ("There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.", MK Gandhi).

Some have even gone so far as to say these two ten year old children deserve to die for what they did. I think a lot of people can identify with what it feels like to be bullied and this outcry is the result of misplaced anger that has simmered for too long (victimes could not take out their frustrations on the person who hurt them, so they show anger towards these two public figures). However, let me relate an important fact: Holding hatred in your heart does absolutely nothing to the person you hate. It only hurts YOU. You are the one who must carry the pain around every day. When Jesus spoke of forgiveness, he did not mean that you should forgive someone for THEM, you forgive someone for your own peace of mind.

And not to get too religious here, but did not Jesus also say "Judge not, lest ye be judged"? And "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord." I'm not even Christian or Catholic, but I bet a lot of people who signed the petition are. Would they all become vigilantes as well? You cannot control what others do, only what you do, and it is YOUR ACTIONS you have to live with. This is what Jesus meant by "turning the other cheek".

My heart goes out to the family of the boy who was slain and ALSO to the two misguided souls who hurt him. Rather than destroy these two souls, ought we not to examine the environment which created them? That doesn't mean only "blame the parents". Studies have shown that a child's environment and peers have a much greater impact on his or her actions and bearing than do parents. (What that means is that a child who has poor parenting but lives in a "nice" neighborhood has a better chance than a child with great parenting but lives in the "ghetto" (See "The Nurture Assumption", by Judith Rich Harris]) . What this means is that, at least on one point (and I hate to admit it), that Hillary (Clinton) was right: it does take a village to raise a child...just maybe not exactly how she meant.

If you don't like your community, stop complaining and be a beacon of positive change. Gandhi said, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind", and also, "Be the change you wish to see in the world". (If you don't know who Gandhi was, I beg you to at least read this).

I hope this made you think. As a vicitm of bullying myself, I know well how it feels and how the effects continue to hurt long after the events cease. But constructive solutions need to address not just the results, but the roots or causes of bullying. It is something that must be addressed by everyone in a community. Instead of preaching vengeance and retribution, we need to be teaching tolerance, compassion, and awareness.

In the immortal words of Rodney King, " Can't we all just get along?" Let's stop finding fault and start finding solutions.