The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Outpouring of Support for Arizona Mother

Apr 28, 2014

A single mother in Arizona is being charged with felony child abuse for leaving her two small children (2 years old and 6 months old) alone in her car for half an hour.

Shanesha Taylor was interviewing for an office job at the time. Taylor’s lawyer said she was desperately trying to find a full-time job so that she could put food on the table for her three children.

Stephanie Cordoba, a neighbor of Taylor’s and a mother of three, said she knows how difficult it can be to qualify for child care if you are unemployed and looking for a job.

Tens of thousands of people across the country shared Cordoba’s feelings of solidarity with Taylor. By April 14, 45,000 people had signed an internet petition, calling on officials to drop the charges. The internet campaign, initiated by a 24-year-old woman from New Jersey, had also raised more than $113,000 on Taylor’s behalf.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said he would still not drop the charges. He even tried to belittle the people who support Taylor: “I don’t know whether any of these individuals in their pajamas who’ve logged on the site and put their names in there really had a clue of all the circumstances,” he said.

This official is the one who has no clue about what it means to be a working-class single mother in capitalist society–or he is indifferent to it. And all those “individuals in pajamas” obviously know a thousand times more about human compassion than prosecutors in black robes like Montgomery!