Dear Editor,
At least that’s what sociologists call it. It derives from the observation that if vandals break a window and it goes unrepaired, then pretty soon lots of windows are broken and in a short period of time, an entire neighbourhood becomes a slum. The single act of minor vandalism that goes unrepaired is seen as licence to do anything at any time without consequence and so social order breaks down and simple quality of life is diminished for everyone. I mention this because, simply put, it is what is going on here and now and this society as a whole is on the brink of that slippery slope that often has a bottomless cliff at the end of it.
Every day, between 5:30 and 6:00pm, a small white truck winds up an almost impassable dirt road that runs alongside the dump to a clearing. There, he dumps garbage, human waste and dead animals, pours gasoline on it all and lights it on fire. For 30 minutes or so there is a huge tower of toxic black smoke and flame which blankets the whole area.
When it started a couple of months ago, I thought it was the junkyard that’s over there accidentally setting a car on fire or something but then it became a daily scheduled occurrence and the other day I happened to be downtown when it started. So I drove over there to see what was going on.
It took three tries but I finally found the correct side road and followed it to the fire. To get there I had to pass through a village of shacks and homemade shelters with entire families living in the most horrible conditions imaginable. Survivors lucky to be alive and scratching out an existence in unbearable squalor. And just beyond them, down a grass track and into the clearing was the guy in the white truck creating a cloud of smoke that, at best, was killing these poor bastards a little bit more every day.
I freely admit that I went there for selfish reasons. That same smoke, when the wind is right, comes straight through my living room and makes the entire area unliveable. And for sure I am no community activist. If I trip over someone in trouble at the moment, I am happy to help but solving the problems of general poverty and social distress are things I leave to those of the mindset and resources to do it. So ... I carry myself down to the police station and tell them about the burning. They blow me off completely. I was an annoyance to them. Same with the fire department. The Nature Foundation didn’t bother to answer their E-mail.
And so now there is your broken window. An individual doing whatever he pleases, brazenly, in the open for all to see, every day making life miserable for everyone around and patently killing those closest by who are too weak and disadvantaged to protect themselves.
Seen alone, it is a disgrace that government does nothing for these people in general but beyond that it is evidence of a systematic and endemic policy of “head in the sand” governance. They are too busy studying their “rules of order” for elections looking for loopholes than to actually help those most desperately in need, never mind the notion of just stopping this criminal doing the burning.
I didn’t bother with the Prosecutor’s Office since, apparently, it is only open and available for two hours a month. And so it seems that there is no one in authority that cares if the criminal in the white truck is simply putting the poorest and most defenceless citizens at death’s door once a day. What does that behaviour say to every other young criminal?
There is no humorous or ironic tagline to this other than to say “You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
Steven Johnson
