The Dallas chapter of Amnesty International organized a rally for the international day of solidarity for Troy Davis who has a strong claim of innocence. True story- I walk up to a big, black, shiny, washed truck with a white, wealthy looking, blond, long sleeved, collared, pink, polo shirt and a big gold college ring wearing guy driving. He asks me what this is all about (a bunch a people between the ages of 3 and 70 wearing bright blue shirts with the words ” I am Troy Davis” written on them standing on the corner of the west village) I told him Troy Davis is innocent and in prison (sorry amnesty my words you are not responsible for my omitting “strong claim” before innocence) and on death row in Georgia. He says to me “what did the guy do” and I say “He is innocent he didn’t do anything” and the guy then says “You don’t go to prison for not doing anything.” And I am like uh where have you been – “Have you seen the news lately we have 23 people in Dallas County who were wrongfully convicted!” And then the red light turned green and our cultural exchange was cut short. He did take a bracelet with Troy’s website link and an info flyer. I hope he educated himself but I would not bet on it. He was like a total cartoon character of classic ignorance. Which reminds me of an incident that happened with Sally and a parent at the mutual school our kids attended last year that I had liked up until the point of this conversation. We are all at an auction, because private schools don’t have enough money, and Sally gets into this heated discussion with, we’ll call him Jim, and I have no idea what they are talking about and then I hear it has something to do with Dallas Can Do Better and I am said “Oh Sally leave the poor guy alone” or something like that and then I joke he should make a donation and I could get her to stop talking about it. And finally the conversation ends and then Sally tells me what they were discussing and I am glad I did not know before as a Margarita and my passion for the subject would have been and explosive combination and I then understood Sally’s intensity in talking with him. His basic position was that if someone is in prison they must have done something wrong even if it is not what they were caught for and therefore they deserve to be there anyway. OMG!!! No respect for that kind of ignorance, lack of humanity, compassion, and just plain hubris to think such a thing could never happen to him. I am digressing again as usual. If you are lucky maybe Sally will post her version of the conversation. I don’t think I have spoken to him at our son’s baseball practices since then. So here we are Dallas fighting ignorance one school auction, rally and blog post at a time.