Sunday, December 28, 2014

Potato Salad

Here is a true story: there is this thing called Kickstarter.  And people can put their ideas on Kickstarter, and get funding from people to make those ideas come true.  People will do it to make a movie or pay for chemotherapy for their child, and anyone can donate.  It’s a pretty cool thing. 

Zack Brown decided that he wanted to make potato salad.  And so he put his pitch out on Kickstarter.  He literally wanted to make a bowl of potato salad, and thought it would be funny to get it funded.  Well, he made $70,000 doing it.  People actually put out their own money, for whatever reason, to help this guy make potato salad.  To the tune of 70K.

Here’s another true story: Wiley Bridgeman spent 38 years in prison, some of them on death row, for a crime he didn’t commit.  Almost four decades, in an incredible miscarriage of justice.  He was finally released from prison about a month ago, at age 60, along with his brother and friend, also improperly convicted of the same crime.  And now that he’s out, he has to start over completely.  With clothes, and sheets, and dishes, and food, and toothpaste, and shoes, and laundry detergent, underwear, napkins, salt and pepper, pots, pans, lamps, gloves….you get the picture. 

There’s a fund to help him, too.  On a site called GoFundMe.  So far, it’s raised somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 bucks.  So, in case you’re keeping score, potato salad raised about five times more than a man who lost his entire life for something he never did. 

And some of you might be thinking, “Well, the government will take care of him.”  Well, it’s not that easy.  He has to hire a lawyer to file a suit, and then the suit has to be accepted, and then someone has to decide how much his life was worth, and then maybe, in a while, he’ll get some money, but his lawyers might get some of that money, too, and meanwhile, the guy can’t wait years to buy socks, pay rent, keep his lights on, eat food, or anything else. 

And I think it’s so sad, that if the friends of Wiley Bridgeman had only thought to offer to make potato salad, or the world largest meatball, or took a picture of Kim Kardashian’s butt, that they could far surpass their modest goal to raise $30,000 bucks for the man.  But they have only provided the facts: that this was a man who was falsely accused of a crime that was not adequately investigated by the police, or properly prosecuted by the government, who spent 38 years in prison for something he didn’t do.  And these facts, for some reason, do not strike the same chord as potato salad.

I’m not doing Mr. Bridgeman, or his friend Ricky Jackson, or his brother, Kwame Ajamu, justice.  I can’t convey their joy in being free, or their forgiveness of all involved in their nearly lifelong incarceration.  But this is what I can say: all of us reap the benefits of having a capable police force, and ethical, dogged prosecutors.  We all reap the benefits of having the bad guys in jail.  We can sleep safer in our beds at night and walk the streets feeling secure because of these things.  And when something goes wrong – goes terribly, horribly, wrong - as a society, we need to take care of the people whose lives were ruined so that we could have peace of mind.  It’s your choice: potato salad, or justice. 


For those who are interested in providing support to Mr. Bridgeman, click here.  

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