The Mattacola Law Firm Blog

MADNESS AND SADNESS IN UPSTATE NEW YORK

Posted in Life ::: April 5, 2009 8:12 AM

 Anytime senseless, violent tragedy strikes in America, no matter where it is, it hits home.  You wonder how something like that could happen, what caused it and pray that it doesn't come to your town.  The shooting this past week in Binghamton, New York hit even closer.  Binghamton is a very similar place to the Rome/Utica area - part of the Upstate "Appalachia" that former Governor Spitzer dubbed it before his fall from grace.  

When something like this happens, one wonders what could drive someone to madness of this magnitude - to enter an immigration facility, block the rear exit and murder thirteen people and then himself.  One imagines the horror of those inside - most of them refugees and immigrants there to learn English and other skills for being productive in this country - as the shots rang out and they realized they had no place to run to.  One wonders how the secretary Shirley DeLucia had the courage and presence of mind to fake being dead after being shot and then call 911 and stay on the phone with the authorities while the shooter was still in the building.  Still in critical condition, DeLucia is a hero.  One wonders all this and then tries to drive these horrors out of mind and move on.  

We shouldn't move on so quickly.  The shooter, Jiverly Wong, was a Vietnamese immigrant who had used this very immigration center himself, taking English classes.  He apparently had just recently lost his job at a Shop-Vac plant in Binghamton and believed people had been making fun of him for his poor English.  

These are scary and stressful times.  The national economy and job market are causing much pain.  The jobless rate is over double digits in some areas.  People are struggling.  The stressors are adding up.  Combine those stressors with other factors - some genetic perhaps, some learned - and there are more than likely a great many time bombs walking around among us.  Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist was quoted as saying "People who end up doing this particular thing have an accumulation of stressors in their lives and ultimately there is one that broke the camel's back.  Job loss is one of the big ones and those stressors are happening more often this year."

Contiguous to this is the growing tension in this country with regard to immigrants and refugees.  There are a great many who, as the economy gets worse and jobs become more scarce, are growing ever more resentful toward those who come here to make a better life for themselves.  Their treatment of these people is lacking in warmth, to say the least.  

I don't pretend to have answers.  But I do know that thought and contemplation of these issues should be given - that we should not be so quick to push this scene out of our minds and hope it doesn't come to our town.  And perhaps, if we encounter a situation, a person, who we see in pain, who we see struggling - maybe we try to help.  There are a great many resources out there and very often, someone in pain will simply not avail themselves on their own - they need help getting there.  And if we are not the person to provide that help, which we may very well not be, then bring in someone who is.  Yes, these are scary and stressful times.  And as much as ever before, people need to feel that they have support and love and that they are not alone.  That could very well be the difference between the bomb going off or being defused.  

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