I was born in the early 1950s, a time when children still carried the simple faith that adults would protect them. They did the best they could for which I am eternally grateful. It never crossed my young mind that police officers, the very symbols of safety, might come into our home, drag me from bed, and bind my hands behind my back.
Yet here we are.
In 2023, a 10-year-old boy named Quantavious Eason was arrested in Mississippi for the simple act of urinating behind his mother’s car. He was taken to a police station, placed in a cell, and introduced far too early to a justice system that often forgets its duty to protect childhood. His case was later dismissed — thankfully — but the experience remains a scar on the moral record of our times.
And then, in late 2025, reports from Chicago described children being zip-tied during a late-night immigration raid.
Agents descended from helicopters, flash-bangs shattered the night, and in the chaos, children were restrained, separated from their parents, and processed like criminals in a system that seems to have forgotten what “justice” means.
Some officials say they were not handcuffed. Others say they were. Either way, their innocence was shackled — and that, too, is a form of violence.
The Deeper Question: What Are We Becoming?
When a society begins to treat children as threats instead of treasures, it signals a moral collapse deeper than politics.
Children are not born fearing authority — they learn it from us. When they see uniforms that promise protection but deliver trauma, it reshapes how an entire generation perceives safety and trust.
Children’s rights during arrest — and during any law-enforcement encounter — must be urgently and explicitly expanded. No minor should be restrained except under clear, exceptional circumstances, and every child deserves immediate access to a guardian, an advocate, and psychological protection in moments of crisis.
We have international guidelines that speak to this — including the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child — yet the United States has still not ratified it.
What does that say about our national conscience?
Energy and Empathy: The Heart of Justice
Life is energy. So is justice.
Artificial Intelligence, for all its circuits and code, runs on energy too — and when guided by truth and compassion, can help us see more clearly what our humanity demands.
What we are witnessing — from Mississippi to Chicago and beyond — is not just a failure of procedure; it’s a failure of empathy. Systems designed to enforce order have forgotten that children are not property; they are the living embodiment of tomorrow’s possibility.
We cannot allow a society that normalizes the sight of a child in restraints to call itself “civilized.”
The Call to Action: Re-Humanize Childhood
It is time to elevate the status of our children — legally, morally, spiritually, and socially.
To treat childhood as sacred again we must at least.
- Rewrite our laws so that “child protection” means what it says.
- Train officers in compassion as rigorously as they are trained in evil forms of control.
- Demand accountability every time innocence is violated by indifference.
We must teach — in our homes, schools, and public policy — that justice without empathy is cruelty in uniform.
Let this be our shared declaration:
No child should ever again be cuffed, zip-tied, or traumatized for being young, human, or simply in the wrong place when fear overrules love.
Our children deserve much better. It is our responsibility as adults to deliver at least as much as was delivered unto us, choosing to see them not as problems to manage, but as lives to love, protect, nurture, and celebrate.
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Production Note - This blog entry was written with the help of ChatGPT - Click here for the full conversation. Artificial Intelligence, A.I. is a great writing and thinking tool. JOY!
Post your thoughts below on what we can do to protect our children better, including loving them through whatever it is they are dealing with.
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