On dominoes, ripples and divine intervention

Go ahead, be clinical about it and call it the domino effect or the ripple effect. Or, be a skeptic and deny that there’s any supernatural influence. I’m here in the middle of it, day after day---have been for the past 16 years---and I know darn well what it is. It’s divine intervention. Pure and simple.

Case in point.

In a telephone conversation with Joyce Davis last May, I discover that this African American mother, battling cancer and living on fixed income in the City of Detroit, is banned from visiting two of her sons serving time in state prisons because of old unpaid traffic tickets.

HFP’s job is first to verify that information. Yep, Lansing says, once a bench warrant is issued for the arrest of someone with unpaid traffic fines, that person may no longer visit persons in the state prison system…not until those fines are paid.

How to help this woman. HFP reaches out to Equal Justice Under Law, fine civil rights organization based in Washington DC that loves to attack states where poor people are punished because they can’t post bond or pay fines. When EJUC gets no response from a prison warden, after explaining that this visitation ban is actually not even in compliance with prison policy, let alone the U.S. constitution, these crack lawyers decide to go to the media.

Enter the Marshall Project--- excellent non-profit news organization that covers the U.S. criminal justice system---where a kind writer not only takes the ball and runs with it…he helps Mrs. Davis to write her own story, in the first person. Immediate response from readers, who ask how they can help!

EJUL quickly sets up a GoFundMe account. In five hours, kind and generous people around the country---many of them doing so anonymously---pony up the $1,500 needed to pay off the fines. For the first time in three years, Mrs. Davis will be able to visit her sons again!

Doug Tjapkes working miracles?

HFP experience and expertise?

Domino effect?

Ripple effect?

Nah, Divine Intervention, without question. It’s a God thing.

We see it daily.

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