- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Tyler, this situation is nothing like the Natalie Holloway case. New Jersey is not a sovereign foreign nation, and Laurel Hester is a citizen of the state that is screwing her over.
You shift the blame to Hester by asking why she didn't make the contingencies, buy insurance, get a new job. As if it's her fault that the system is unjust, and it's her fault she came down with cancer.
No, you do not change the system based on individual cases or emotional appeals. But when the system is unjust and wrong, sometimes it takes the vividness of an individual victim of that system to drive home the injustice and to get people to act.
I'm sure people like you would have been equally dismissive of Rosa Parks (just move to the back of the friggin bus already, you know the law!) and Ruby Bridges (you have your own school, you know the law!).
