Good Samaritans & Vicious Thugs

Just now Channel 4 interrupted its telecast of the World Track and Field Championships with news that was so astonishing,  I was CERTAIN that I had heard wrong.  But no, it’s true. . . the mayor of Milwakee, Tom Barrett,  was viciously assaulted last night as he was leaving the Wisconsin State Fair with his family.  What happened was that they came across a woman who was being assaulted- and when Mr. Barrett tried to step in and calm the situation and prevent the man from harming the woman, he went after the mayor (evidently not even recognizing him) with some sort of metal pipe and inflicted serious injury to his head.  The mayor is in the hospital having sustained some very nasty injuries,  but is expected to recover.

There are so many amazing things about this story- but one of them is that the mayor of Milwaukee is walking around the parking lot of the Wisconsin State Fair without aides.  I realize that he’s not the president of the United States but somehow I would have thought that someone in that sort of position would not be on his own, especially under those sort of circumstances.

Another is that the mayor would act as he did.   There are a lot of perfectly decent human beings who would have hesitated to step into the midst of such a potentially dangerous situation.  Mayor Barrett seems not to have hesitated at all.   That is courage at its finest.

I don’t know if there are special laws on the books for criminals who do harm to Good Samaritans,  but if there isn’t there should be.  The most despicable thing about this incident is that it discourages others from being Good Samaritans.   Actually, that’s perhaps good to a point because people need to be careful and cautious when interacting with someone so disturbed and dangerous.  But every time someone suffers harm while trying to help someone else,  a little bit of love is stolen from the world and one more layer of crust grows around most of us.  Whoever this Anthony Peters is who has been arrested in the incident,  he hurt more than the mayor of Milwaukee last night.  He hurt all of us.