compassionate leaders

Fiorello LaGuardia was the mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression. Mayor LaGuardia strove to be a man of the people, among the people. He rode the New York City fire trucks, raided city "speak easies" with the police department, took entire orphanages to baseball games, and when the New York newspapers went on strike, he got on the radio and read the Sunday funnies to the kids.

One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter's husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. "It's a real bad neighborhood, your Honor," the man told the mayor. "She's got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson."

LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said, "I've got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions. Ten dollars or ten days in jail." But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous hat, saying, "Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr.Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant."

The following day, New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered woman who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren. Fifty cents of that amount was contributed by the grocery store owner himself, while some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations, and New York City policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing ovation.

we get so caught up in the inevitability of divisive and manipulative politicians that we forget it has not always been this way. a lack of compassion does not have to be par for the course. over the past couple years i’ve retreated away from keeping up with much of what happens around politics because of the massive amount of distrust i’ve accumulated towards politicians due to the empty rhetoric without coupled action. recently, i’m coming into the belieft that withdrawal may not be the answer. sure our current political system is a far cry from an efficient government that keeps the people’s best interests at heart, but maybe this does not have to be the case. 

as elections loom, i’m looking for leaders who seek compassion. that may be hard to find, and maybe their benevolence will be coupled with a few faulty policies. sure, if the judge in this story made this a consistent reaction to every thief that came before him, it would be terrible public policy. however, if we don’t grab hold of seeking compassion in the political area, we will simply head further down a road of divisiveness and inequality. 

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” -MLK the “edifice” in our country needs restructuring. i pray for leaders that seek to do so with empathy and humanity. and just for JL - amen.