I'm a believer in miracles. I'm filled with boundless hope.
That's why I'm writing you now; not just writing but begging, pleading for what must be done, surrendering all of myself to what must be done, for Stockton to survive its darkest night.
Is Stockton lost?
Sometimes it feels like it but worse, sometimes it feels like it was never found.
Right now, in this supposedly civilized age of technology and advanced democratic ideals, the world itself seems like its falling. In my city, the atmosphere is putrescent with corruption and horror as cuts to education leave our children ignorant, cuts to company's work forces leave grown men and women homeless, and cuts to the police force leave all of us unprotected and living in fear.
Sixty-five human beings have died this year. And dozens have gone missing under suspicious circumstances. And they aren't just known criminals and gangsters but women and children; ambushed, surrounded, shot, done away with. But it's not just the murders, the robberies, the attempted drive-bys, the prostitution, the trafficking, the rapes, the molestations in church and school, the drug abuse, the overdoses, the hit-and-runs, the arsons, the starvation, the homelessness, or even the petty pick-pockets but the air.
The air, meaning the rage and immorality that has infected our city, turning not only the night but the day into a ragged, festering desperate crusader of malevolence and depravity. But not just the air has this feeling seeped into but apparently into the water we drink, the cotton we wear, and the portable heart attacks we consume.
But with all the horror I alluded to, it begs the question: is the city worth saving? The answer feels simple but is argued evasively so as to discourage the masses but encourage the individual. The answer, is first and foremost, one of not whether the people in the city are worth anything, deserve anything. It is one of needs; does the heart need blood, the lungs oxygen, or life, the dawn?
There are children here, children that will grow up thinking this world is ugly and unforgiving, thinking its existence is pointless. These children will not strive to save it when its teetering towards absolute destruction. They will watch not with despair or terror but with relief. Relief that a world so sickened by man and man so sickened by its world sinks into universal oblivion.
So with one final plea, change our destinies, save us from ourselves. We are not holy people, this is not a worthy city, we simply are what our world has made of us. Do not take us as we are, take us as we can be because humankind in this moment is at a crossroads between the devil and the stars. Make us more than what we are, do not just show us the light, give us the dawn.

With hope and anticipation,
E. Williamson