- Hen March Outlaws Cops.
In those wild, early days,
Hen March found herself surrounded by cops.
They weren't really cops in any official sense,
just a group of men who took it upon themselves
to meander around town with weapons,
asking random people random questions.
You know, cops.
Hen March, newly elected
leader/boss/mayor/whatever of hearts
had not yet appeared
in every chamber of the city.
Her face was not yet an icon,
a stenciled spark on every empty wall
so this group of cops did not recognize her,
and being cops who did not recognize a person,
they stopped her.
"What are you doing here?"
Now, as large as Hen March looms in our history,
she was also a very small woman.
She looked up at the half dozen men,
their drawn blades
resting jauntily on their shoulders,
their eyes suspicious, frightened,
even if not of her specifically.
"What am I doing here?"
Hen March's voice,
which had always come from somewhere else,
somewhere she did not completely remember,
sliced to the dusk like lightning.
"What are you doing here?
Because I am the newly elected
leader/boss/mayor/whatever of hearts,
I led from the front
in the war with the violence,
I defended the keep Mushroom Mountain
for 10 days and 11 nights.
I wrote the Constitution
and I don't recall there being
anything in there about cops."
Seeing that her anger and her resume,
which the normally humble Hen March
tried very hard to only reference
when she absolutely had to, or just wanted to,
had frightened the men.
Hen March smiled
and took a seat on a nearby bench.
Of all the memories they took out of our head
before exiling us,
they somehow forgot to take this one,
that the only way to keep people
from constantly murdering each other
is to let armed bullies wander around
and threaten to put them in cages for years,
decades at a time, the absurdity.
We don't need that
and I know that when that's
the only definition of safety
we have in our heads,
living without it can be scary.
What if someone does something bad?
How will we protect ourselves?
These are valid questions.
And of course there will be problems.
People will steal things,
spouses will beat on each other,
tempers will flare
and someone will lunge
at someone else with a knife,
and yes, we need to be prepared
to deal with all of these problems
and issues and situations,
but too many of us here deal with
and immediately think punish.
We assume people are terrible
and set up a whole system
to slap them around for being terrible
or we see the absolute worst examples
of how terrible we can indeed be.
The serial killers and cannibals
and assume that we have to order
our entire society around them,
put all of our wealth and resources
into dealing with them.
So no matter how few of them there are,
or how ineffective those efforts end up being,
we just keep doing it, but what if,
what if "deal with" meant something else?
What if it meant heal the harm?
What if it meant do everything we can
to prevent the harm
from happening in the first place?
Our Constitution states,
when a problem comes up,
we figure it out together.
My critics have told me that this is too vague,
but what's vague about it?
When a problem comes up,
we figure it out together.
Tell me, is it more wise or more logical to say,
when a problem comes up,
we will call on a gang
of unaccountable, armed strangers
who are very likely also bullies
and bigots with authoritarian
personality complexes
to show up an hour or two later,
push people around
and maybe throw someone in a cage for 10 years
and call that a problem solved?
No.
No cops.
Neighbors, family, helpers,
experts, medics, shamans, scrappers,
friends of friends, preachers,
healers, mechanics, witches,
in-laws, volunteers, whatever,
we'll figure it out, but no cops.
The men nod nervously and scatter.
Whether they were moved by her words
or by her reputation as the fiercest fighter
the young moon had ever known,
only the future can say.