Tragedy

[bcholmes]

If I controlled the universe, tragedy would be measured differently. Public response to Nelia Laroza's death, for example, would far exceed public reaction to Holly Jones' death.

Entire communities would mobilize around efforts to ensure that health care is a safe profession. The government would be pressured to change law, change budgets, (change premiers ferchrissakes), to make hospitals better. People would demand inquiries into the history of health care underfunding.

Comments

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Color me working too hard recently to keep up with the news, but the two names mean nothing to me.

blame location

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Holly Jones was a little girl who was molested and murdered. As always happens in such cases, the public are screaming for changes in how the law treats people convicted of crimes against children.

Nelia Laroza was a nurse who recently died of SARS, the only person in the health care profession to do so.

[david365.livejournal.com]

Holly Jones was the young girl who was kidnapped, raped, and brutally murdered/dismembered in Toronto within the space of 18hrs near the beginning of June.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Both are Toronto-specific.

Holly Jones was a 10 year-old girl who disappeared while walking home not too far from where I live. Her remains were found in two different locations in Toronto.

Her death was much more violent than Toronto is accustomed to. The case has prompted a lot of renewed interest in, for example, keeping lists of known sex offenders, and Holly's neighbourhood has mobilized to form street patrols.

Nelia Laroza was the first Toronto health care worker to die from SARS.

you've heard this before

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I want to see Mike fucking Harris brought up on charges.

Re: you've heard this before

[eck.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

So we have Calgary and rural fucking Alberta as an excuse and only get stuck with Ralph Clown; what's Ontario's excuse? :-(

criminal elections

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Pretty much the same thing. Toronto may have the majority of the population, but the majority of the ridings are the rural areas and suburbs -- and they almost universally went Tory. Toronto went completely Liberal and NDP.

There have been times during the first few years where I have been convinced that policies have been designed specifically to "punish" Toronto -- cutting spending on things that are only of benefit to people who live in high-density centres.

I once saw a letter to the editor where some guy who described himself as a "fiscal conservative" was complaining that they had cut funding to WheelTrans. (Public transportation for the disabled.) "They said they were going to cut funding to luxury programs, but I didn't know they meant me!"

Fuckhead.

Hopefully things like Walkerton and closed schools and having to travel 5 hours to the nearest hospitals have woken people the hell up.

[eck.livejournal.com]

Best platform I've seen all decade. You get my vote -- and soon I should have one, only you'd have to field a candiate in the Edmonton-Strathcona riding.

I trust education fares better when you're in charge, too. On good terms with Jack Layton by any chance?

re: tragedy

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

Entire communities would mobilize around efforts to ensure that health care is a safe profession.

sorry, not possible. some professions can't be made safe. safer, yes, safe, no. but i believe that there ought to be compensatory benefits for working in such professions. IMO programmers get paid way too much, and nurses not anywhere enough, just as an example.

as to measuring tragedy -- i think attempts to do so are at best moot and at worst stupid dickwaving. i'd neither want to be killed and dismembered nor die from a communicable disease. i would be all with you though on public response to tragedy -- i think as a society we ought to be less inspired by quick bandaid "solutions".

change in premiers, oh yeah. am all for that (and not just for ontario). there'll be much payment for harris' regime down the road, *sigh*.

Re: tragedy

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

as to measuring tragedy -- i think attempts to do so are at best moot and at worst stupid dickwaving. i'd neither want to be killed and dismembered nor die from a communicable disease.

<nod>

I guess part of what I was thinking about when I wrote this was my perception of a message that because Holly Jones was a child (an innocent child, if I can wax stormy petrel for a moment), it was especially tragic. I, personally, don't think that way, but I feel like that message is a big part of why there's such huge response to the Holly Jones murder.

Maybe my perception is wrong. Or maybe it's right, and I just have different values than other people. And maybe it's moot. And maybe I don't even have a point that I'm building up to. So there.