by Ben Cohen
I published a piece last week denouncing the terrible shaming Arday was experiencing because it was obvious what could happen. No human being could endure that level of public humiliation without severe consequence, and unfortunately in this instance, the worst possible outcome transpired.
When I heard the news of Arday’s death on Friday of last week, I was on Clapham Common in the London neighborhood that both he and I grew up in. We did not know each other, but he was a Clapham boy, like me. We would have taken the same buses, gone to the same afterschool programs, and probably known some of the same people.
As the news sank in, I could not push an image of him out of my mind. It was Arday as a little boy kicking a football around on the common, as I had done. Because that was what the world seemed to have forgotten; that Jason Arday wasn’t the sum of his professional transgressions, or an object onto w…