(no subject)
Shawna was recently bugging me about not having updated this in over a month, so I figure its time to write something. One of my resolutions for the new year was to start writing in here every day again; obviously, I am not doing a great job of that so far. In my defense, its been a somewhat crazy and hectic start to 2006. Between a hectic schedule, having been sick with some flu bug or other three times in the past couple of months, and being behind on a lot of things, I haven't been paying attention to Livejournal much. The flu episodes have been particularly annoying, as I rarely get sick and once went through a five or six year period without getting so much as the sniffles. But anyway, thanks to Shawna for giving me the proverbial kick in the ass to get writing again. I've gotten in a rut as far as that goes and I'm a believer in the old saying that the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth. And besides, I'm usually happier when I'm writing or doing something creative.
I guess I have to begin with the craziness that hit the UNC campus last week. Some of you may have heard about this, since it made the national media. Last Friday (March 3) just before noon, a UNC alumnus sped through the Pit (a main gathering place right on the heart of campus) in a rented SUV, hitting nine people. Fortunately, no one was killed and everyone is expected to recover. Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, who is originally from Iran and grew up in Charlotte, has been charged with nine counts of attempted first-degree murder and nine counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. His apartment complex in Carrboro had to be evacuated throughout Friday afternoon because he made statements that law enforcement found suspicious and they had to bring in a bomb squad to search his apartment. I'm sure I'm in agreement with most people in this town in being extremely relieved that everyone is going to be OK. I am also a bit rattled because it is an area that I frequent on occassion and I might have been there at the time of the attack had I not been in meetings downtown all morning.
Allegedly, the guy's motivations were to protest American treatment of Muslims around the world. Needless to say, this has set the campus right wing loons in a frenzy and they are demanding that it be labelled a terrorist attack before all of the facts are even in yet. There was even a hastily organized protest in the Pit this past Monday (three days after the attack) decrying the media's lack of willingness to refer to the incident as a terrorist attack. I took a look at the sponsors for the planned rally--sponsors which included the College Republicans and outspoken campus right-wingers Kris Wampler and Jillian Bandes--and decided to give the rally a pass. Because of course, it was not a rally designed to bring the campus and town together in a time of tragedy; rather, from all accounts I've heard, it was basically a forum for shrill divisive right-wing rhetoric and a platform for Wampler and Bandes to get their names in the papers.
To give everyone some background here: Wampler was one of the students who sued the University a few years ago for selecting a book about understanding the Qu'ran for its summer reading program. Bandes is a former columnist for the Daily Tarheel who once said in a column that all Arabs should be strip-searched and cavity searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport. She was fired for that column, not because of her idiotic opinion, but because she deliberately misquoted sources and commited other violations of the standards of journalism--infractions that were clearly explained by the DTH's editors after a full investigation. Of course, to hear the conservatives tell it, her firing was one more blatant example of the horrible liberal persecution that right-wingers go through every day in their heroic efforts to stand up against liberal oppression in defense of truth, justice, and the American way. Well...we all have our own pet ways of viewing ourselves, I suppose.
We can't simply put a label on something before all the facts are in. If we do, we're never really certain if the label is accurate. And even if it is, simply attaching a label to something does nothing in helping us to understand it or to correct whatever caused it to occur. Fortunately, cooler heads seem to have prevailed as UNC's chancellor has declined to label the act terrorism and allow that determination to be made by federal authorities (who presumably know more about the subject than the College Republicans). Also, a column in this week's Independent points out that after the last random violent attack in Chapel Hill 11 years ago, no one rushed to place labels on the act based on someone's ethnicity or religion. What is ironic to me is that these right-wingers are so blinded by ignorance and prejudice that they cannot even see that they are buying right into the terrorist's view of himself. Terrorists have a romantic notion of themselves as matyrs and revolutionaries gallantly fighting the forces of some real or imagined oppression (not unlike Jillian Bandes, for added irony).
The worst insult to a terrorist is to be considered a common thug or criminal, which is of course what they really are. Hurling divisive rhetoric and messages of prejudice toward other nationalities or religions is the worst possible way to respond to an attack. That merely plays into the hands of what terrorists want, which is to cause conflict and destroy any atmosphere of respect and trust between people. The terrorist seeks to divide societies and considers those who use their actions as a pretext to extremism of their own to be allies. The goal of the terrorist is to fuel hatred, conflict, suspicion, and paranoia. This breaks down the fabric of society and causes a democratic and open society to begin to destroy itself from within. A better response that does not play into the hands of terrorism is to care for the victims, honor the victims and those who helped them, come together as a society, and move on with life. It does not make sense to allow society to alter itself or to attach some greater significance to the actions of a terrorist, since these things are what the terrorist wants.
The bottom line on Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar is that he violated the laws of North Carolina by trying to deliberately kill people with a vehicle. Whether he did it because he heard voices in his Rice Krispies or because of some delusional martyr complex is really beside the point. He is a thug and a criminal who tried to deliberately kill people who have absolutely no connection to the policies and actions he is allegedly "protesting". He committed 18 serious felonies and for that, our justice system will, after a fair trial examining all the evidence, ensure that he spends the rest of his life rotting away in a jail cell where he belongs. We do not need to reinforce Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar's deluded grandiose visions of himself as some savior of Muslims. The vast majority of Muslims around the world would condemn his actions. What this community needs is to come together to heal--and then move on with life. Justice can be left to law enforcement and the courts where it belongs.
Since some people have asked, I thought I'd mention that yes, I am still working with the local Community Initiative to End Homelessness, a consortium of social service agencies, government entities, churches, and individuals interested in developing and implementing a local 10-year plan to end homelessness in 10 years. Dozens of communities across the nation are participating in these 10 year plans and, at least locally, I am very optimistic about where we're heading and that we'll in fact be able to make real progress toward that goal. Were I not confident of that, I would not have stayed involved for this long (going on 15 months now).
I'm sure that some who have known me for a long time would be surprised that this is an issue I'd be involved with for so long. And truthfully, perhaps I am a bit surprised myself in that its not an issue with which I thought I'd ever be so deeply and personally involved. But after being involved for over a year and learning so much about the factors that contribute to homelessness, its become clear to me that so much of what we want to be as a society starts with economic inequality. Recently in the New York Times, there was an article describing how a pressing problem for the richest Americans lately is--I'm not crazy enough to make this stuff up--a lack of places to dock their megayachts which have apparently become so huge that a lot of marinas can't accomodate them. Meanwhile, a recent count has found nearly 90,000 homeless people in Los Angeles alone. And every day, millions of Americans must make choices such as whether to fix the car they need to get to work or buy groceries for the week. Or whether they should fill their prescriptions for medicines they desperately need or keep the heat on in the middle of winter.
This of course assumes that some tragedy doesn't strike that pushes people right over the edge. And when a person is, as Senator John Edwards recently put it, "living on the edge of a razor blade", it does not take much to push them over that edge. It does not have to be something as dramatic as Hurricane Katrina and the suffering we've all seen in the aftermath of that. It can be a sudden illness and not having health insurance with which to cope, loss of a job and not having the education and skills needed to get one that pays as much as the old one, family issues, domestic violence, depression or other psychological issues (which are only compounded by having to survive every day in such desperate circumstances), and the list goes on and on. We were all surprised by the massive suffering that was exposed to us in all its horror by Hurricane Katrina's hit on New Orleans. And yet, millions of our fellow Americans have to deal with such desperate circumstances every minute of every day.
Added to all that is the fact that the economy is radically changing and some people are ill-equipped to cope. Many people are often caught in a whirlwind of economic and societal changes and rapidly evolving circumstances and events that are far beyond their control. Globalization and the continuing fast-paced technological revolution that is leaving many of our most vulnerable citizems behind are two examples that come to mind. I talked with a lady at a recent focus group here who did not know how to operate a computer because when she graduated high school, there was no such thing in widespread use--and there is a shortage of resources to help her get the skills she needs. That is just one example and there are numerous others. It is a myth--a horrible, damaging myth that causes a lot of lives to be destroyed--that the poor and homeless are simply lazy no-good bums who don't want to work and got themselves into their own situations through their own choices. It is also a myth that these people have nothing to contribute to society.
If there's one thing I've learned in the past year, its that we have a lot of lives going to waste in this country because of the failures of our society. And of course, our society tells us to shut up and be grateful for the few little crumbs that manage to fall down to those who have the least. But I am not grateful; I am angry that this is the kind of society we live in. I find it unacceptable. We can do better and I will continue to expect better from the richest country that has ever existed in human history. We have so much in this country, and yet, do so little. I hear all these pronouncements from Christians that America is a Christian country. Leaving aside for the moment the debate about whether that is what we were intended to be, I can't help but wonder if America today is how a Christian country is supposed to look. I don't recall anything in the life of Jesus that would lead me to believe that he would be a supporter of a society based on out of control greed, lack of compassion, and prejudice and hatred. I'm sure I'll have a lot more to write about these issues in the days ahead.
I am never one to advocate doing something just because you can. The right of free speech does not give someone license to disregard respect and civility or to deliberately hurt or offend others. With rights come responsiblities, including the responsibility to use discretion in how you exercise your rights. That said, rights should not be easily taken away either. Free expression is one of the cornerstones of a free society. To curtail that right takes a very good justification and the bar needs to be set very high when you start talking about things like censorship. The bar has to be a lot higher than simply what offends someone, particularly what offends one religious group or other.
A world in which there is international censorship of anything that offends a religious group--either though law or through implied threats of violence--is a scary proposition to me. The Danish newspaper that first published the depictions of Muhammed might have shown poor taste in running them. That is a debate for another time. But we as a society cannot accept denying the paper the right to publish what it chooses. These cartoons were intended to make fun of those who use religion to incite violence. Whether that goal or the way it was done is or isn't appropriate is a matter for honest debate. But the paper did have a right to publish the cartoons, whether or not someone found them insulting. With free expression comes the right to be wrong or to be insulting or offensive. Whether its the Prophet Muhammed or the Son of God or the Queen of England (or Denmark for that matter) or the idiotic little gnome who currently occupies the White House, people have a right to have different opinions, including opinions that go against someone's established views. There is no corresponding right to not be offended. Nor should there be.
And speaking of rights, I find it disappointing that more Americans know the five members of the Simpsons cartoon family than know the five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment. For the record (in the event that any of these people are reading), the five freedoms are freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The members of the Simpsons family are Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie.
I guess I have to begin with the craziness that hit the UNC campus last week. Some of you may have heard about this, since it made the national media. Last Friday (March 3) just before noon, a UNC alumnus sped through the Pit (a main gathering place right on the heart of campus) in a rented SUV, hitting nine people. Fortunately, no one was killed and everyone is expected to recover. Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, who is originally from Iran and grew up in Charlotte, has been charged with nine counts of attempted first-degree murder and nine counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. His apartment complex in Carrboro had to be evacuated throughout Friday afternoon because he made statements that law enforcement found suspicious and they had to bring in a bomb squad to search his apartment. I'm sure I'm in agreement with most people in this town in being extremely relieved that everyone is going to be OK. I am also a bit rattled because it is an area that I frequent on occassion and I might have been there at the time of the attack had I not been in meetings downtown all morning.
Allegedly, the guy's motivations were to protest American treatment of Muslims around the world. Needless to say, this has set the campus right wing loons in a frenzy and they are demanding that it be labelled a terrorist attack before all of the facts are even in yet. There was even a hastily organized protest in the Pit this past Monday (three days after the attack) decrying the media's lack of willingness to refer to the incident as a terrorist attack. I took a look at the sponsors for the planned rally--sponsors which included the College Republicans and outspoken campus right-wingers Kris Wampler and Jillian Bandes--and decided to give the rally a pass. Because of course, it was not a rally designed to bring the campus and town together in a time of tragedy; rather, from all accounts I've heard, it was basically a forum for shrill divisive right-wing rhetoric and a platform for Wampler and Bandes to get their names in the papers.
To give everyone some background here: Wampler was one of the students who sued the University a few years ago for selecting a book about understanding the Qu'ran for its summer reading program. Bandes is a former columnist for the Daily Tarheel who once said in a column that all Arabs should be strip-searched and cavity searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport. She was fired for that column, not because of her idiotic opinion, but because she deliberately misquoted sources and commited other violations of the standards of journalism--infractions that were clearly explained by the DTH's editors after a full investigation. Of course, to hear the conservatives tell it, her firing was one more blatant example of the horrible liberal persecution that right-wingers go through every day in their heroic efforts to stand up against liberal oppression in defense of truth, justice, and the American way. Well...we all have our own pet ways of viewing ourselves, I suppose.
We can't simply put a label on something before all the facts are in. If we do, we're never really certain if the label is accurate. And even if it is, simply attaching a label to something does nothing in helping us to understand it or to correct whatever caused it to occur. Fortunately, cooler heads seem to have prevailed as UNC's chancellor has declined to label the act terrorism and allow that determination to be made by federal authorities (who presumably know more about the subject than the College Republicans). Also, a column in this week's Independent points out that after the last random violent attack in Chapel Hill 11 years ago, no one rushed to place labels on the act based on someone's ethnicity or religion. What is ironic to me is that these right-wingers are so blinded by ignorance and prejudice that they cannot even see that they are buying right into the terrorist's view of himself. Terrorists have a romantic notion of themselves as matyrs and revolutionaries gallantly fighting the forces of some real or imagined oppression (not unlike Jillian Bandes, for added irony).
The worst insult to a terrorist is to be considered a common thug or criminal, which is of course what they really are. Hurling divisive rhetoric and messages of prejudice toward other nationalities or religions is the worst possible way to respond to an attack. That merely plays into the hands of what terrorists want, which is to cause conflict and destroy any atmosphere of respect and trust between people. The terrorist seeks to divide societies and considers those who use their actions as a pretext to extremism of their own to be allies. The goal of the terrorist is to fuel hatred, conflict, suspicion, and paranoia. This breaks down the fabric of society and causes a democratic and open society to begin to destroy itself from within. A better response that does not play into the hands of terrorism is to care for the victims, honor the victims and those who helped them, come together as a society, and move on with life. It does not make sense to allow society to alter itself or to attach some greater significance to the actions of a terrorist, since these things are what the terrorist wants.
The bottom line on Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar is that he violated the laws of North Carolina by trying to deliberately kill people with a vehicle. Whether he did it because he heard voices in his Rice Krispies or because of some delusional martyr complex is really beside the point. He is a thug and a criminal who tried to deliberately kill people who have absolutely no connection to the policies and actions he is allegedly "protesting". He committed 18 serious felonies and for that, our justice system will, after a fair trial examining all the evidence, ensure that he spends the rest of his life rotting away in a jail cell where he belongs. We do not need to reinforce Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar's deluded grandiose visions of himself as some savior of Muslims. The vast majority of Muslims around the world would condemn his actions. What this community needs is to come together to heal--and then move on with life. Justice can be left to law enforcement and the courts where it belongs.
Since some people have asked, I thought I'd mention that yes, I am still working with the local Community Initiative to End Homelessness, a consortium of social service agencies, government entities, churches, and individuals interested in developing and implementing a local 10-year plan to end homelessness in 10 years. Dozens of communities across the nation are participating in these 10 year plans and, at least locally, I am very optimistic about where we're heading and that we'll in fact be able to make real progress toward that goal. Were I not confident of that, I would not have stayed involved for this long (going on 15 months now).
I'm sure that some who have known me for a long time would be surprised that this is an issue I'd be involved with for so long. And truthfully, perhaps I am a bit surprised myself in that its not an issue with which I thought I'd ever be so deeply and personally involved. But after being involved for over a year and learning so much about the factors that contribute to homelessness, its become clear to me that so much of what we want to be as a society starts with economic inequality. Recently in the New York Times, there was an article describing how a pressing problem for the richest Americans lately is--I'm not crazy enough to make this stuff up--a lack of places to dock their megayachts which have apparently become so huge that a lot of marinas can't accomodate them. Meanwhile, a recent count has found nearly 90,000 homeless people in Los Angeles alone. And every day, millions of Americans must make choices such as whether to fix the car they need to get to work or buy groceries for the week. Or whether they should fill their prescriptions for medicines they desperately need or keep the heat on in the middle of winter.
This of course assumes that some tragedy doesn't strike that pushes people right over the edge. And when a person is, as Senator John Edwards recently put it, "living on the edge of a razor blade", it does not take much to push them over that edge. It does not have to be something as dramatic as Hurricane Katrina and the suffering we've all seen in the aftermath of that. It can be a sudden illness and not having health insurance with which to cope, loss of a job and not having the education and skills needed to get one that pays as much as the old one, family issues, domestic violence, depression or other psychological issues (which are only compounded by having to survive every day in such desperate circumstances), and the list goes on and on. We were all surprised by the massive suffering that was exposed to us in all its horror by Hurricane Katrina's hit on New Orleans. And yet, millions of our fellow Americans have to deal with such desperate circumstances every minute of every day.
Added to all that is the fact that the economy is radically changing and some people are ill-equipped to cope. Many people are often caught in a whirlwind of economic and societal changes and rapidly evolving circumstances and events that are far beyond their control. Globalization and the continuing fast-paced technological revolution that is leaving many of our most vulnerable citizems behind are two examples that come to mind. I talked with a lady at a recent focus group here who did not know how to operate a computer because when she graduated high school, there was no such thing in widespread use--and there is a shortage of resources to help her get the skills she needs. That is just one example and there are numerous others. It is a myth--a horrible, damaging myth that causes a lot of lives to be destroyed--that the poor and homeless are simply lazy no-good bums who don't want to work and got themselves into their own situations through their own choices. It is also a myth that these people have nothing to contribute to society.
If there's one thing I've learned in the past year, its that we have a lot of lives going to waste in this country because of the failures of our society. And of course, our society tells us to shut up and be grateful for the few little crumbs that manage to fall down to those who have the least. But I am not grateful; I am angry that this is the kind of society we live in. I find it unacceptable. We can do better and I will continue to expect better from the richest country that has ever existed in human history. We have so much in this country, and yet, do so little. I hear all these pronouncements from Christians that America is a Christian country. Leaving aside for the moment the debate about whether that is what we were intended to be, I can't help but wonder if America today is how a Christian country is supposed to look. I don't recall anything in the life of Jesus that would lead me to believe that he would be a supporter of a society based on out of control greed, lack of compassion, and prejudice and hatred. I'm sure I'll have a lot more to write about these issues in the days ahead.
I am never one to advocate doing something just because you can. The right of free speech does not give someone license to disregard respect and civility or to deliberately hurt or offend others. With rights come responsiblities, including the responsibility to use discretion in how you exercise your rights. That said, rights should not be easily taken away either. Free expression is one of the cornerstones of a free society. To curtail that right takes a very good justification and the bar needs to be set very high when you start talking about things like censorship. The bar has to be a lot higher than simply what offends someone, particularly what offends one religious group or other.
A world in which there is international censorship of anything that offends a religious group--either though law or through implied threats of violence--is a scary proposition to me. The Danish newspaper that first published the depictions of Muhammed might have shown poor taste in running them. That is a debate for another time. But we as a society cannot accept denying the paper the right to publish what it chooses. These cartoons were intended to make fun of those who use religion to incite violence. Whether that goal or the way it was done is or isn't appropriate is a matter for honest debate. But the paper did have a right to publish the cartoons, whether or not someone found them insulting. With free expression comes the right to be wrong or to be insulting or offensive. Whether its the Prophet Muhammed or the Son of God or the Queen of England (or Denmark for that matter) or the idiotic little gnome who currently occupies the White House, people have a right to have different opinions, including opinions that go against someone's established views. There is no corresponding right to not be offended. Nor should there be.
And speaking of rights, I find it disappointing that more Americans know the five members of the Simpsons cartoon family than know the five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment. For the record (in the event that any of these people are reading), the five freedoms are freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The members of the Simpsons family are Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie.