Brave or foolish, you be the judge

Our supervisor just told us that she regularly sees roving gangs of young men stage battles on BART trains. She has to ride through a few cities every night to get home from Oakland.

She says when she sees a fight about to break out she moves to another train.

She said the the most frightening incident she has seen was a group of 2 gangs that were commencing to fight, and a very large Black man, who had been sitting on the train playing with his tiny child, stood up to get between the gangs and acted as a peacemaker, saying, "Brothers, we do not want to do this."

She said she will never forget the sight of this giant man and the beautiful child looking up at him. "He was like a hero," she said.

Most of us were skeptical, and felt that the man could have been murdered in front of his child. Which would have been a tragedy. The death of any one of the young men fighting would have been preferable to his. But maybe if there were more men as brave as this guy, there would be safety in numbers. But then I guess his life would not be as valuable if he was not the brave man that he is.