The Whack Heard 'Round the World

     Danuta Danielsson had nothing but passion and a purse when Neo-Nazis marched through her Swedish town in 1985. She was infuriated because her mother had been imprisoned in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, so she took what she had and acted.     
     The whack of this ordinary woman was seen around the world and was eventually recognized with a statue.     
     Is Danuta the kind of person we should memorialize? I don’t condone violence during protests, not even with a handbag, but isn’t it better to honor bravery like this rather than that of Confederates who enslaved people for their profit?     
     We can laud ordinary heroes even if we don’t raise a memorial to them. We can revere people like Patrick Hutchinson, a black grandfather who carried an injured white man in London over his shoulder during a protest to get him out of harm. What he had was strength, and with that he crossed cultural lines to do what was right.     
     I’m as unremarkable as Danuta Danielsson or Patrick Hutchinson, and I sometimes wonder whether anything I do could make any difference. But perhaps the real question is whether I’m willing to step out of my comfort zone to do what is right when I hear of or see wrongdoing. I could at least speak up.     
     Would I dare?     
     Or am I afraid to be an ordinary hero?     ***     
     Photos: top, Hans Runesson; middle, Romea.cz; bottom, Dylan Martinez, Reuters.