If you’ve walked quiet beaches or sandy soils, you’ve most probably been startled by a brownish bird, with broken wing screeching and zooming past you. You might well decide the bird has been attacked by a fox, has escaped, now runs away to hide.
Wrong. This is the behavior or a sandpiper or killdeer, an Academy Award performance to draw attention away from a ground level nest complete with eggs. Time and again the wily bird will pretend because it knows the weak or crippled will present the easiest snack for any predator. The bird will show one reality, so the predator doesn’t see another—the nest. They deflect.
Humans also deflect. We draw attention to one thing to draw attention away from a another thing. We deflect, especially if the human nest is at risk. Like the killdeer, humans will insist that we see one pretend thing and ignore another reality.
I am reminded of this when I read of Representative Womack’s son’s release from prison with a presidential commutation. Wars, riots, lies, tariffs, more lies, arrests, deportations, shootings – all to deflect. I am to rivet my attention on the human killdeer, not look elsewhere.
Who can notice a father bringing home a son when there are all those other headlines to grab my attention?
Today I wonder about that presidential commutation. Who is this guy whose prison term was commutated at age 38?
He is the son of Representative Steven Womack from this Third District. Beyond that I could not find educational or work-related information, but by 2007 he entered the prison system in Arkansas, then in and out for eleven years. He is drawn as a semi-professional criminal, majoring in the drug world with a minor in guns. No job is recorded. His final arrest was in 2018 when he was given a 9-year sentence in a federal prison.
So this guy had no job, no education, no profession, no evidence of anything else. But he did have a daddy, a daddy who had been elected to represent the Third District in Arkansas, a daddy who has not once voted against the wishes of the president, not once questioned the MAGA politics. Sheltered by horrible headlines, he brought home his son in the quiet of the shadows.
There is nothing wrong with a father working to free his son from prison, nothing wrong if that father were not elected to represent the people of the Third District. While there is no information about the exact number of people incarcerated from any one district, there are more than 27,000 people in Arkansas prisons. It would not be unreasonable to think that a third of them come from each of the three districts, so 9,000 from the Third. Seventeen per cent of that population are in prison for drug related reasons, so over 1,200 were similar to this 38-year-old son of our Representative. He brought home only one son, his.
Sifting through those numbers about the Third District, there must be other families with sons or daughters in prison, some for drug related crimes. As Womack manipulated to free his own son, did he speak up for any of those imprisoned from other families he is paid to represent? He records that he is happy to have his son back home.
Did he bring home the son of any other family? Has he worked on behalf of others in prison? Has he advocated for drug courts, proven to be more successful and less expensive than imprisoning those with high level drug problems? Has he advocated de-criminalizing cannabis? Those are, of course, rhetorical questions. He has done nothing of the sort. But he has managed to get his own son out of prison.
I have never been in prison and I would not advocate that Womack’s son be put back in prison. Like most old people, I have a well-honed sense of right and wrong. It is wrong that a man with political connections can get his son out of jail and leave behind all others. Representative Womack is not doing his job unless he represents all who are incarcerated from his district, or at least displays some effort to that end.
So what can we do? Three telephone calls, at the very least.
- Call Womack’s office (202) 456-4301 where you can identify yourself and either say or write your wishes.
- Call the White House (202) 456-1111, identify yourself, say or write your wishes.
- Call your local courthouse to make sure you are a registered voter. If you’re not, then register.
- This is the strongest stick you have. If you haven’t voted before, know there will be kind people who will help. If your eyesight or reading skills are weak, again know there are kind people who will help. Even if you think I’m a crazy old woman whose ideas you could never accept, vote for your ideas. Register to vote and then VOTE