Killer quote from @garlichbreath about the Boston bombing suspect

The Boston bombing suspect has been captured.  There were SO many resources spent finding him and bringing him in.  So.  Many.  Resources.  And, can you remember the last time U.S. Americans were perfectly ok with the government conducting house to house searches?  Me neither!

Killer quote from @garlichbreath - 4-20-13 - 1My friend Andy Garlich tweeted this thought last night.  It’s worth repeating because it perfectly captures what life should be like.

“@garlichbreath: If only this passion for justice and anger at evil could be directed at sex trafficking, child abuse and other atrocities in the US. #Merica”

When you look at the awfulness of this terrorist act from Monday and compare the number of dead and injured to how many suffer daily from the horrors Andy mentioned…the number of casualties from the Boston bombing pales in comparison.  It doesn’t take away from the evil of this terrorist act, or how glad I am that they found who (most likely) plotted and executed this senselessness.  Andy’s thought does capture something important, though.  What if we took the same sniper rifle intensity in our approach to fixing issues like human trafficking or other issues that aren’t going away?  The evils he mentioned in 140 characters are much more common place than a terrorist attack and the amount of victims it produces.

Did you know that between 14,500 and 17,500 people are annually trafficked into the U.S.?  Most of them are women and children.  Slavery didn’t end back when it took 10 minutes to take a picture.  (By the way, can you imagine how awkward taking a selfie back in 1865 would have been?  Aca-awk!)  Bonded labor is a real and active business all over the world, including the U.S.  In fact, the FBI has a special unit designed to battle trafficking right in my town of Kansas City.  It’s that close to home for us.

Terrorism isn’t ending any time soon.  But neither are the more common things that detest us.  We should be all about finding people who kill or injur the innocent, whether it’s a terrorist act in public or a terrorizing act in secret.

This ends my rant for today.

Let me leave you with a blessing, one that I hope spreads as effectively as a ravenous desire to find a terrorist does.

May you lose sleep over the everyday injustices in the world.  May you count sleeplessness as a blessing and count having a good night’s rest as a curse, if it means helping end an injustice.


About Brian Swanson

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