Old news

I want to link to a couple of items from today’s paper, so let me first reassure you that I’m not trying to turn into Will Bunch and don’t intend to make a daily dose of local news a regular feature.

Neither of these stories, mind you, is anywhere near as important as this or this or this, but I haven’t yet gotten to the point where I can discuss those without sliding into a profanity-filled tirade. I can’t yet offer any more helpful comment than to point out that these people are perverse and monstrous and, based on their own words, their own admission, the question is not how long they should be allowed to remain in office but how long they should be forced to rot in jail. These motherless bast…

OK, no. See? Still a bit too sputtery to discuss all of that. Soon, though. For now I’ll just stick to a couple quickie notes from today’s paper.

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Here’s the AP’s follow story on the government-sponsored research on using sewage sludge to try to neutralize lead-contaminated soil.

The mix of human and industrial wastes from sewage-treatment plants was spread on the lawns of nine low-income families in Baltimore and a vacant lot next to an elementary school in East St. Louis, Ill., to test whether lead in the soil from chipped paint and car exhausts would bind to it.

The research conducted in 2001 and 2002 was funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Agriculture Department and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The idea being tested here might be a good one. The way it is being tested is troublesome for two big reasons, neither of which has anything to do with the ickiness of sludge. The foul smell here comes from something else.

First, and most obviously, this is a test, an experiment. This research was being conducted to find out whether or to what extent, if any, mixing such sludge with contaminated soil might be effective in neutralizing the toxic lead present there. The people conducting this research, in other words, were doing so because they do not yet already know whether or to what extent this might be effective. That’s what “research” and “experiment” mean. Yet when they arranged for this research with those nine families in Baltimore and the hundreds of families whose children attend that East St. Louis school, the researchers didn’t present the technique as experimental — they told those families that they already knew that this method would be effective. They didn’t already know this. What they told those families was not true.

Second, the researchers also reassured those families, with greater confidence than they could claim, that they were certain the sludge itself posed no additional threat. That was probably true, but not the certainty it was presented to be. Those families had the right to be informed of the distinction between pretty sure and certain.

The research being conducted here was worthwhile, noble even. These families were already living in a toxic environment and the researchers hoped, suspected and believed that they might have a way to help with that. That’s what they should have told these families.

The most scandalous thing here has nothing to do with the researchers or with sludge. The deeper scandal is the problem those researchers were trying to address: That it is not unusual in this country for poor, black children to live their lives surrounded by the toxic threat of lead. Researching a potential way to neautralize that toxin is one step up. Conducting that research dishonestly and unethically is two steps back.

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The other piece of news from today’s paper isn’t really new, just an astonishing bit of local history from 40 years ago — a look back at former Delaware Gov. Russell W. Peterson’s decision to end the military occupation of the City of Wilmington.

This is one of those things that I initially had to read and re-read to convince myself that I’d read it right. The what? In the rioting that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. 40 years ago, Delaware’s Gov. Charles L. Terry Jr. called in the National Guard to patrol the city. OK, I get that. That happened in a lot of cities in the spring of 1968. But in Wilmington, the National Guard troops stayed for nine and a half months. The troops patrolled the city until Terry was voted out of office.

Peterson, a Republican of the sort that’s much harder to find these days, campaigned on the promise that he would end the military occupation of this American city. Peterson’s speech, given just before taking office, strikes me as worth quoting today:

What has happened in Wilmington is a warning not only to the citizens of Delaware but to all Americans. The deeply disturbing fact is that many citizens not only favored, but demanded the military patrols.

American tradition says, “It can’t happen here.”

Our experience in Delaware tells us that, to an alarming extent, it has happened here. History tells us that when people voluntarily accept military controls, for any reason, they often end up losing their own freedom.