Using Tragic Suicides for Political Gain

Two examples.  First, from Wisconsin:

Jeri-Lynn Betts, an early childhood teacher in the Watertown, Wisconsin, school district, died on March 8 of an apparent suicide.

A colleague says she was “very distraught” over Gov. Scott Walker’s attacks on public sector workers and public education.

Betts, 56, was a dedicated teacher who was admired in the Watertown community.

“She was an amazing person,” says the Rev. Terry Larson of the Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church in Watertown, where she was a member. “She really put her heart and soul in her work,” adds Larson, who officiated at her memorial service on March 15.

“She was one of the good guys,” says Karen Stefonek, who used to teach with Betts. “She was very, very dedicated, and worked so well with the little special needs children. She just was very, very good with them, and very well respected in the district.”

In the days after Betts’s death, two members of the school district contacted The Progressive about her death, calling it a suicide and saying it was connected, at least in part, to the policies that Walker has proposed. He has demanded that public workers, including teachers, contribute a significant amount of their salaries to health care and pensions. And in his budget, he proposed taking $900 million out of the public schools, imposing a freeze on property taxes so local governments can’t chip in more for education, and allowing any student, regardless of income, to go to a private school with a taxpayer subsidy.

“She was definitely very distraught about it,” said one of her co-workers, who requested anonymity. “She was feeling a lot of stress about the legislation that was going through.”

And from Costa Mesa, CA:

The suicide of a 29-year-old city worker Thursday after being called in to receive a layoff notice has caused not only grief, but also provoked anger and vitriol in the community.

Police are still investigating the incident and have not said why Huy Pham, a city maintenance worker, jumped off the five-floor civic center. Pham was off work because of a broken ankle, but he was called in to receive his layoff notice.

About 213 city workers, roughly half of its workforce, were supposed to receive pink slips. The Costa Mesa City Council voted earlier this month to outsource 18 city services including those provided by Pham's department.

Although there has been no official word about why Pham jumped, his supervisor, Helen Nenadal, said she and many other employees believe he killed himself because he was laid off.

"Employees have been on a six-month rollercoaster not knowing what's going to happen," Nenadal said. "Yesterday was when they handed out the pink slip. Of course, (his suicide) had a great deal of connection to it."

Who knows what demons are lurking in the mind of someone who decides to kill themselves.  However, trying to make political points by exploiting those tragedies is simply despicable. Neither the Wisconsin law nor the Costa Mesa layoffs (which are six months in the future) are enough in and of themselves to push a mentally healthy individual into suicide. There had to be other issues going on in that person's to leave them unstable enough to kill themselves.

Both situations are sad, but so is the reaction from those who are trying to play emotional games by blaming government officials for the suicides. And bottom line, just because someone kills themselves, even if a governmental action might have contributed to it, doesn't mean that governmental action is wrong. Suicide is not a trump card in determining moral high ground.