Intoxicated Driver Runs Her Down, She's Blamed

An old civil-rights activist, now gone, once told me a joke she'd heard about the state in which she grew up:  A couple of sherriff's deputies find the body of a Black man on a river bank.  His hands and feet are tied, and there's a noose around his neck.

"Dang!," one exclaimed. "They've sure got some strange ways of commitin' suicide."

That joke is, of course, a commentary on race relations.  But it also points to something that I've come to believe.  Call me a cynic, but I think too many police officers' first impulse in any situation is to blame the victim.  

Such a reaction, I think, has several sources. An obvious one is that constables tend to be suspicious of everyone.  For some, it might be innate, but for others, I'm sure it comes from dealing with the worst people and worst moments.  Another, I think, is police training:  They are taught to be ready for anything and everything and, because of policing culture, they can't or don't understand why other people aren't prepared for something they couldn't have foreseen. So, they come to believe, if they didn't before they became officers, that if something happens to you, you must have done something wrong.

There is something else that, in some situations, can cause law enforcement officers to blame the victim:  their ignorance of the law.  Such was the case of Obianuju Osuegbo.  In August 2020, when she was 17 years old, she was riding her bicycle home in Barrow County, just east of Atlanta.  A driver struck and killed her.

Obianuju Osuegbo

The Georgia State Patrol's Collision Reconstruction Team blamed Osuegbo for her death.  Their reasons?  Her bike didn't have a light on the rear.  And she wasn't wearing reflective clothing or riding on the right side of the road.

On their face, those reasons could help to establish fault with the teenager, but wouldn't be enough, by themselves, to affix blame. (At least, that's my guess. I'm not a lawyer.)  However, Bruce Hagen, the family's attorney, pointed out that state statutes say only that a bicycle must have a light only if it doesn't have reflectors--which Osuegbo's bike had.  

About riding on the right side of the road: She was turning left, so she couldn't have been on either side of the road. Also, the law states, "vehicles which approach from the rear, any other vehicle or vehicles stopped or slowed to make a lawful turn shall be deemed to be following the purposes of this code section."

Hagen, who conducts bike law training for police officers,  said that the responding officer and GSP team investigated the crash, but were unfamiliar with the Georgia laws. The officer and team, however, surely must have been familiar with another law because, well, pretty much every place in the Western world has it, in one form or another:  the prohibition against Driving Under The Influence.  The motor vehicle operator, Chrissy Rawlins (Is that a Georgia name, or what?) was high on multiple drugs, including methamphetamine and Valium when she ran into Osuegbo.   

She was indeed charged with DUI and for endangering the welfare of her children, who were with her in the car.  Hagen is seeking to have her charged with vehicular manslaughter.  

He and Obanuju's mother, Pauline Osuegbo, say they will not stop until they get justice.

The Leak

Warning:  I am invoking the Howard Cosell rule.

Today I'm too upset to talk about much of anything.

By now, you've heard about the leaked draft, written by Justice Samuel Alito, of the Supreme Court's opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Of course, that doesn't mean the law has been struck down--at least, not yet.  But, according to the draft,  Justice Clarence Thomas as well as all of Donald Trump's appointees--Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch--had already voted to overturn the 1973 ruling that the US Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause provides a "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's right to choose whether or not she wants to give birth.

Alito based his argument, in part, on the fact that abortion isn't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.  Of course, any number of right-wing politicians and their supporters--who include those who are waiting, with bated breath, for Alito's opinion to become an actual ruling--have also tried to strike down the Affordable Care Act because the right to health care isn't guaranteed in the Constitution.  Now, I'm not a Constitutional scholar and my mind may not be suited for jurisprudence, but to me, such arguments sound a bit like saying that French pastry chefs shouldn't make a mille feuille with passion fruit, mango and coconut cream because such ingredients weren't available to Francois Pierre La Varenne when he wrote Le Parfait Confiturier during the reign of Louis XIV.  Or, perhaps, saying in essence that we shouldn't guarantee the right to something that isn't in the Constitution is like saying that money shouldn't be set aside for bike lanes and education because bicycles and cyclists aren't mentioned in a city's or state's traffic statutes.

I realize that some of you may feel differently about abortion rights than I do.  And, some of you may wonder why I, who never have been and will be pregnant, should care about abortion rights.  Well, for one thing, you might say that undergoing my gender affirmation made me into something of a feminist, if I wasn't already one.  But more important, if a government tells a woman or girl that she absolutely must, under penalty of law, carry a pregnancy to term, even if it resulted from rape, incest or other actions not of her choosing, what else can that same government tell us to do--or not do--with our bodies?  Would I have been able to get the therapy, take the hormones and undergo the surgical procedures that enabled my gender affirmation (and undid some of the damage from decades of living "in the closet?"  Will someone be forced to undergo treatments or procedures--think chemo for advanced cancer patients--against their wishes, even if refusing such procedures or treatments will harm no one else?  

Oh, and if a government can tell people what they can and can't do with their bodies, it will also more than likely have the power to rigidly enforce the traditional gender binary and to say what men and boys or women and girls can or can't do.  I can't help but to think that overturning Roe vs. Wade will also make it easier to overturn laws allowing same-sex marriage--and allow laws like the ones in Texas that criminally charge parents who seek gender-affirming treatment for their children.

Finally, I think of the time I worked with children, in camps, a hospital and in workshops I conducted as a writer-in-residence in New York City schools.  While I did whatever I could to nurture the kids in my charge for as long as they were with me, I couldn't help but to think that some of their parents simply shouldn't have been parents.  That is not to say, of course, that the children shouldn't have been born. I simply think that, whatever one believes about abortion, there are few worse tragedies than a child born unwanted, who will never be loved or cared for properly.  The worst part is that such kids know who they are and too many never recover from such knowledge.

I am scared shitless.  I am fucking scared shitless.  I don't know how else to say it.

A Ride Into Living Color

In at least two ways, my Saturday ride to Connecticut and back was perfect.

For one, I pedaled into the wind just about all the way there.  By the time I got to the Greenwich Common, I was feeling its effects--and the sun on my face.  I'd worn sunscreen but I think I absorbed more rays than I'd taken in months.  (If nothing else, I got a healthy dose of Vitamin D.)  So, the packet of Kar's Sweet 'n' Salty mix I'd stashed in my seat bag was especially tasty and felt like a "superfood" for the rest of my ride.

I say the wind was part of a "perfect" ride because it was at my back for most of the way back!

But another thing that made my ride, which I've done many times, so nice was that the wind seemed to have blown the clouds away.  So, the bright sun made the air more brisk and the colors more vibrant.

I reminded myself that those flowers were planted in memory of war veterans.  Of course, there is no justice in dying in combat, whether or not in a "just" cause:  The combatants, most of them very young, did not have the opportunity to do most of the things most of us take for granted as normal parts of our lives.  But at least there is beauty, in living color, in their honor.  

Yesterday the Five Boro Bike Tour rolled through this city, passing just a couple of blocks of my apartment.  Two of my neighbors expressed consternation that I wasn't part of it.  I explained that I participated, probably, about twenty editions of it, including two as a marshal but the event has grown too big and commercial. ($100 to register? Yes, the swag and catered gourmet snacks are nice, but that's not why I go on a ride!) Besides, my ride to Connecticut and back is about twice as long as the 5BBT.  But just hearing "I rode to Connecticut" surprised them even more than my absence from one of the world's largest cycling throngs.