One of the biggest tragedies to have befallen us in the last month, is the senseless killing of Athanasius Laborde, whom the artistic community and the country continue to mourn. We received the following piece from Barbara Jacobs-Small and feeling that it expresses the feelings of so many of our population, decided to pass it along to our readers in this forum, usually reserved strictly for eRemembering Laborde and those for whom justice remains at large

06th July 2010
The analysis of the paralysis

Since the murder of Athanasius Laborde, I have carried this weight in my belly. It feels like sadness, it manifests like despair and it is seriously debilitating, because the world, the community I knew is plummeting, spiralling, caught up in a vortex of darkness and mayhem, and many of us remain clueless.
And, I can hear Laborde asking “Barbara Jacobs, what’s the analysis of the paralysis?” It was his stock phrase, and in his death, begs an important question for us as a community.
I have no answers, except that as a society, we have become dangerously de-sensitized to the evil that walks among us - listen to the radio, the talk shows and the street-side commentary influenced by the perspectives of society’s ‘gatekeepers’. There is little good news nowadays. Just mostly crippling dysfunction in high places, rumours of corruption and escalating moral decay. Bacchanal of all types is the present day religion. It is clear that our primary preoccupation to feed to the monster [awakened among us] its daily dose of sensational titillation, morbid speculation, roro and scandal.
If culture and conscience bears accurate record, like Jahborde’s, Philbert-Jules and the many whose names will become a mere statistic, a forgotten memory - the lifeblood of this country is ebbing, spreading a reproachful stain across the untruthful claims we make about ourselves – “a God-fearing people, proud, socially conscious”.
For years I have been convinced of the responsibility we all have to speak up, say something, even if it is to let it be known that there are people who abhor the changing face of this society; but with every such conviction there are a dozen reasons why one just says nothing. Today I hear those who say that we get the leadership we deserve, that the reflection from the seats of power is a reflection of who we are as a society. But history is full of examples of ordinary people who had the moral conviction to take a stand for something, who spoke up, who let it be known that they expect more, better – from not the Government, or the police, but from themselves.
To stay quiet, is to contribute to the moral decline, or to use Jahborde’s word, to feed the “paralysis.”
The recount of the police response to the calls to help Laborde is damning. Are we still there as a law enforcement agency? This kind of heartless laziness resonates as depraved as the knife wielding assailants. The police must know that it sets us as a society back to having no trust, no confidence that there resides any better moral fabric in the place where our safety is supposed be sacrosanct.