Jason Weinberger didn’t think to do the right thing.  He just did it.  Instinctively.

When he noticed a pickpocket reaching into a woman’s purse on the Red Line Thursday morning, Jason didn’t hesitate–he reached over and yanked the guy’s hand out.  Because it didn’t belong there.

Immediately, the criminal turned on Jason and started in with the shouting, the browbeating, the loud-mouthed outrage that only the truly guilty seem capable of summoning.  He created enough of a fracas to buy time until the next stop where he bolted.

Jason isn’t Bernie Goetz.  As far as I know, he doesn’t spend his free time watching Deathwish movies or parading around in the Sliwa fashion.  He’s an Element 79 copywriter, and a pretty good one, who  has a friend-filled life inside and outside the agency.  What impressed me yesterday when he showed up at the office still a bit shaken, was the utter unconsciousness behind his action.

In a big city where a million private dramas unfold every moment, it wasn’t a big thing.  But it’s no small thing either.  Behavior like this provides the foundation of a civil society–an intolerance of wrong.  Some turn away but we are a better republic because many don’t.  Like Jason.

And that’s far more relevant to all of our lives than the salacious but ultimately pathetically banal sexual transgressions of Tiger Woods.

Thanks for that Jason

By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Element 79