Mob Rule Prevails As Aaron Persky Is Fired
Remember Aaron Persky, the Santa Clara County judge who was recalled for simply following directions? Persky was recently hired as a JV girls tennis coach at Lynbrook HS, and only days after protests of his contentious history surfaced, he was fired.
According to FUHSD coordinator of communications, Rachel Zlotziver, in an email to district staff, Persky was “a highly qualified applicant for the position, having attended several tennis coaching clinics for youth and holding a high rating from the United States Tennis Association.”
Persky was not fired because he was inadequate. He was fired because of mob rule, the same tactic which caused his recall.
In June 2018, Persky came under fire for sentencing rapist Brock Turner to a mere six months in prison. The sentence is too short, but Persky did not spontaneously decide to serve a small sentence, he was following a recommendation. According to NPR, the six-month sentence was a recommendation by the Probation Department. Recalling Persky did one thing, and one thing only: encourage judges to give the maximum sentences to criminals no matter what.
Mob rule has been a problem for over a century, yet nothing has ever been done to prevent uninformed citizens from brazenly calling for drastic action against people who may not have done anything wrong.
In 1838, during the Lyceum Address, Abraham Lincoln said: “such are the effects of mob law; and such as the scenes, becoming more and more frequent in this land so lately famed for love of law and order; and the stories of which, have even now grown too familiar, to attract anything more than an idle remark.”
Mob rule did not just stop with ending Persky’s judicial career. The students who started a petition to fire Persky stated that Persky did not “respect the bodily autonomy of women,” and that he “is not the type of person our 14-16 year old girls on the JV Sports team should have for a coach or mentor.”
Do these students realize that Persky committed no crime and has dutifully upheld the law for 15 years? For simply giving a lawful sentence, Persky has once again awakened the mob, and now he is paying dearly for it.
Three thousand signatures in a matter of days, all of which call for the firing of a coach is the definition of mob rule. LHS removed Persky before they fully thought about the consequences of their decision.
Persky’s his actions do not warrant the mob that ruthlessly went after him, and he definitely did not deserve the public hounding him until he was unable to hold a job for more than a month. Aaron Persky’s life is being ruined, only because he followed the Probation Department’s recommendation, as judges often do.
As Abraham Lincoln said in 1838, “There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law . . . and in neither case, is the interposition of mob law, either necessary, justifiable, or excusable.”