Thirty-Eight Witnesses by A.M. Rosenthal is a little book, consisting of only 69 pages. It is really an essay on the dangers of apathy and inaction. It is so valuable.
In 1964, a young woman in Queens was attacked, raped, and stabbed to death seventeen times over the course of half an hour outside her apartment.
Thirty-eight of her neighbors witnessed the attack. No one did anything to stop it. No one called the police. No one came to her aid. No one seemed to care.
This attack and murder of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese became one of modern history’s most unsettling and confounding conundrums for generations of psychologists, sociologists, and community members.
How can thirty-eight ordinary citizens — people with good jobs and good families and good homes — how could they slide so far down on the scale from empathy to apathy and allow for such brutality and injustice to happen right in front of them? How could they not band together and help?
This story, the Genovese case, has become a cliché for apathy and cowardice toward the suffering of others, and an intellectual and religious mystery: what does it mean to me? To you? To us as a society?
The bigger question, the mystery for me: how could it have happened that thirty-eight people - thirty-eight - heard the screams and did nothing. Two or three, all right, but everybody, all thirty-eight? All thirty-eight of them refused to answer a cry for help from a person they could not see?
And then… there’s us, today.
Is it a greater mystery, a greater offense, that - by light of day - each of us withhold help to those suffering, when it would cost us virtually nothing and put us in no peril, even though we see their faces?
It’s 2019 in Idaho, and gay and transgender people across most of our state can be fired from their jobs, evicted from their apartments, and refused goods and services for no other reason than their sexual orientation or gender identity.
It is time for Idaho to Add The Words “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the Idaho Human Rights Act. By not including these four words, we are withholding help and expressing apathy to injustice happening right before our eyes.
I call for the citizens of Idaho to band together. It is within our power to create change for the thousands of Idahoans not accurately represented in the Idaho Human Rights Act. We are individuals, but our individuality is expressed within overlapping social constructs that include: race, class, national origin, religion, age, disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation. These social constructs are woven together and have historical, economic, and political power.
In the middle of a cold night in 1964, thirty-eight people refused the risk of getting involved by answering a cry for help from a person they could not see.
In the light of day in 2019, we will answer the cry for help and demand that the Idaho Legislature pass bill, SB 1015, to Add The Words.
