On June 24, 2009 at a corner of Republic Street, in Tehran, a main center for printing shops, a young engaged couple fled into an alley to escape a charge by club-wielding security forces. "Why are they attacking me?" the woman cried. "I only came here to print my wedding cards!"
"The people are like water and the ruler a boat. Water can support a boat or overturn it." From Shakespeare's The Tragedy of King Richard the Third
I have been riveted by the news coming out of Iran. You Tube and Twitter messages are flooding the internet. Upheaval in a foreign country is not that unusual and reliable reports typically reach us via our news media. But here we have eyewitness accounts and pictures on a scale that has never been seen before. Watching the videos made on the street, and reading the tweets coming in from people risking their lives is fundamentally different than watching a reporter provide the details. You feel a connection to these people like nothing you feel from a news broadcast or a newspaper article. Suddenly, they are just like us. You find yourself cheering for them, anxious that they are unharmed and that justice prevails in their country. It is no longer abstract or political theorizing. We are one with them. We want them to be free - to make their own choices.
Can you imagine what the videos and tweets would have been like coming out of Tienanmen Square or Nazi Germany? How different would the world be, if today's technology had existed at crucial times in history?
Google Alert brings me the online news about Agoura Hills. Almost every day there is an article somewhere about Mel Gibson and his church. The media thinks that Mel’s church is in Agoura Hills, or maybe Malibu, but it isn't in either city. It is in an unincorporated area of L.A. County that has an "Agoura" address. No wonder the media is confused. The political and geographic boundaries in our area are enough to confuse even those who live here.
Agoura Hills is a city in L.A. County, but it is contiguous to a large unincorporated section of the county which has always been called “Agoura.” The post office in Agoura Hills services this part of L.A. County as well as the community of Oak Park, which is actually in Ventura County. It also services a section of another L.A. County city, the city of Calabasas. That section of Calabasas is sometimes called “Calabasas Hills.” To make matters even more confusing, a section of the city of Agoura Hills is widely known as “Old Agoura.” Old Agoura is a community on the east side of the city that enjoys a unique identity as an eclectic, equestrian area.
Confused? It gets worse. Agoura’s neighbor to the west, the City of Westlake Village is an incorporated city within the County of Los Angeles. But although the City’s political boundary stops at the county line, the designation of “Westlake Village” spills over into several neighborhoods on the Ventura County side of the line which is actually in Thousand Oaks. The body of water called Westlake Lake straddles the county line, one side in Westlake Village, the other in Thousand Oaks. But people living on both sides say they live in Westlake Village, or maybe just “Westlake.” The Westlake designation, along with the county line, extends north of the 101 freeway and takes in Westlake High School on the Ventura County side, and the area to the west of the high school up to and possibly including the auto mall. But, of course, Westlake High School is in Thousand Oaks and high school students from Westlake Village don’t go there. They actually go to high school at Agoura High. Whew!
Thousand Oaks includes the communities of Westlake (not the “Village”) and Newbury Park. I am very familiar with the political boundaries of Agoura Hills, and less so with the neighborhood boundaries of Westlake and Newbury Park. But it does seem like the residence of Newbury Park, having their own unique name, are somewhat less confused than some of the rest of us. Their high school aged kids actually go to Newbury Park High School.
In spite of this political balkanization, the communities of this region share a wonderful, and readily defined, geographic area, the Santa Monica Mountains, and the neighboring Las Virgenes and Conejo Valleys. The Ventura Freeway, U.S. 101, is a common link and commercial corridor that ties the region together. The communities in our region share a common ecology and economy. When the mountain lion known as P-1 crossed into the Santa Monica Mountains from the Simi Foothills, he didn’t care what city he was in. And I don't think he was looking for Mel's church.
"If it is not law, it is better than law, it ought to be law, and will always be law wherever justice prevails." Ben Franklin
Since I just received a summons to jury duty, I thought it appropriate to find out what Ben Franklin had to say about the jury system. The quote above was Franklin's reaction to the verdict in the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger. Zenger, a printer and editor of the "New York Weekly Journal," was charged with sedition and libel for exposing the corruption of the King's appointed governor. Although what he wrote was the truth, writing it was clearly against the law at the time. Zenger freely and defiantly admitted what he had done. His only defense was that he had told the truth. The judge directed a guilty verdict and told the annoyed jury that "the truth is no defense!" But the jury was persuaded that the truth of what Zenger had written justified disregarding, or "nullifying" the unjust law. Zenger was aquitted.
Franklin approved of the decision and spoke here in favor of a jury having the power to acquit someone found to have violated a law, if the law itself is unjust. Of course, today's courts frown upon jurors sitting in judgement of the law itself. And, given the verdicts in some highly publicized celebrity trials, maybe the public would not want juries to have that power either. I don't know. Franklin's views may have arisen in a simpler time. Even so, I don't think I could vote for conviction if I thought the law that was violated was completely unjust.
