Maintain Our Social Covenant - Or Else
You ought to be outraged at what happened to Jose Ramon Baldizon.
Not just the fact that the 23-year-old Miami gas station attendant was robbed in his workplace Sunday afternoon.
Not even the fact that the robber killed him with a single gunshot to the side.
No, the thing that really ought to make your mouth go dry is this: Three separate times, people walked in on the robbery in progress. Three separate times, they saw a man with his hand in a brown paper bag pressed against the side of an obviously terrified Baldizon. And three separate times, they did nothing. One of the three has since come forward to say she didn’t realize what was going on, a second has told police he heard Baldizon plead with the gunman to let him go, the third witness has yet to be identified. None tried to interfere or call police. They just spun around and left, salvation making a U-turn.
You ought to be outraged.
And you ought to remember, if you’re old enough, the story of Kitty Genovese. Thirty-three years ago, she was hacked to death on a quiet street in the Queens Borough of New York. The attack took half an hour and was witnessed by 37 of her neighbors.
Who did nothing.
We all know the mantra of such urban apathy by heart: “I don’t want to get involved. I just mind my own business.” But that’s a crock. We are involved. This is our business.
Who is it that lives in fear of dark corners and late hours? Who is it whose freedoms have been eroded bit by tiny bit these last decades? Who is it who’s taking self-defense courses, buying home security systems and learning to quick-step toward the car, keys in hand?
You, that’s who. And me.
Don’t you know we owe each other better than this? Don’t you understand that it’s your duty to watch my back and mine to watch yours? Haven’t you figured out yet that we are all we’ve got?
Of course, that’s the problem, isn’t it? There is no more we, just me - just shortsighted self-interest. We’ve lost sight of community, mislaid our sense of social covenant. And that’s the real tragedy.
Ultimately, after all, it’s not fear of police or courts that maintains the peace. It’s that covenant, the implied rules that allow us to exist as a society. It’s the understanding that there are some things one does simply because one is supposed to.
That’s the real reason we stop at stop signs, pay our subway fare, wait our turn at the market, even when we could easily get away with breaking the rules. It’s why we help a man in trouble.
“Because we are supposed to.”
Otherwise, what’s the point? Otherwise, how can we call ourselves a society?
Indeed, there are already places where we cannot, neighborhoods and enclaves as lawless and mean as a frontier town in the Old West. You look at such places and shudder, wondering if they are a foretaste of the future.
Why not? Any time the covenant can be broken with impunity, the result is inevitable: Order breaks down like an old jalopy, peace of mind frays like a dry-rotted cloth. And all hell breaks loose.
Crime didn’t do this to us. We did it to ourselves. Because, you see, the issue is not simply fear but a deeper thing, a soul corrosion. Consider what happened Sunday. Granted, it’s hard to blame the people who walked into that gas station for not physically challenging an armed robber; I can’t say I wouldn’t have fled the place just as they did. But I know with a certainty that if I was able to get to a place of safety, I would have called police instantly.
One can only wonder at the humanity of someone who had that chance and did not. Moreover, one can only imagine what went through Baldizon’s mind when he saw those people coming. Did he rejoice, thinking himself saved? Did he wait for the sound of sirens that never came?
Or did he know how cold this world can be? Did he realize he was on his own?
The social covenant, you see, is not abstract concept, but the only real barrier between civilization and savagery. Sunday afternoon, it was the only hope for Jose Ramon Baldizon. And it wasn’t nearly enough.
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