[Mb-civic] Spiritual discipline against intimidation - The Boston
Globe
William Swiggard
swiggard at comcast.net
Sat Jan 7 07:28:51 PST 2006
Spiritual discipline against intimidation
By Jeffrey L. Brown | January 7, 2006 | The Boston Globe
IT HAS BEEN three weeks since four promising young men were brutally
killed in my neighborhood. Though the incident received a flood of
attention at the time, no suspects have been apprehended. No one has
come forward with information or clues as to who could have committed
such a heinous crime. What is most disturbing is that the event itself
has now woven itself into the collective fabric of the community, and we
have moved onto the next tragic killings. The images come all too
frequently: The presence of yellow crime scene tape. Blood spilled on
the ground. Hysterical family members and exasperated community
residents in front of cameras. Caskets of young bodies carried out of
churches and hoisted into hearses.
Inner cities now struggle with a form of gangsterism and criminality in
which violence and terror from our own children are forms of social
control. As a faith leader I've wrestled with this question: When do the
rights of intimidators end, and the rights of frightened witnesses
begin? With freedom of speech comes a corresponding ownership of social
responsibility. I'm coming to the realization, however, that our latest
controversy is merely an outgrowth of the deeper problem facing
inner-city neighborhoods, not only here, but throughout the nation.
At issue is the mistaken notion that there is a difference between
violent street life and other forms of community life; that when
violence happens, as long as it is not on your doorstep, it can be
ignored, endured, or tolerated. But the recent murders down the street
from my house taught me two sobering lessons.
First, that the specter of violence gives no thought to race, social
class, or neighborhood lines. The rise of homicides in our city is
reminiscent of other violent surges in our past, and although the
players change, it has the same paralyzing effect. Parents and
grandparents are held prisoner in their homes, afraid to go a few steps
away from their doors for fear of violence. Young people feel that they
have to protect themselves by carrying weapons of their own. The flow of
civic life gets rudely and abruptly interrupted by random, terrifying
shootings. These conditions prove that violence has never been ''street
business" alone. I recently heard a minister, paraphasing a biblical
quote, say, ''A bullet is no respecter of persons."
The second lesson is that street life and community life are the same. I
learned in my antiviolence work that the streets are not there to be
''taken back" by good people. The streets were never taken from us in
the first place. We abandon them as we move up in life, and hope that
they do not disturb our personal or social progress when violence calls.
When we turn our faces away, however, and block it from our minds,
telling ourselves that it is no business of ours and it can't touch us,
we give the cycle of violence new energy.
The atmosphere of violence and intimidation cannot be met with public
apathy. Among other things, it must be met by a spiritual discipline
that causes us to reject our fears and indifference in favor of an open
and shared sense of interdependence. If we hold clergy accountable for
their conduct around sexual abuse issues, and if we hold the police
accountable for their conduct around racial profiling issues, then we
must hold ourselves accountable for the children of our community, which
means rejecting the culture of silence and intimidation.
Fifty years ago, a bus boycott occurred that began the death knell of
segregation and discrimination based on race. In Montgomery, Ala., the
names of Rosa Parks and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. became symbols
of a nation confronting the social oppression of its time. The great
lesson of the civil rights movement, however, was not in its legislative
accomplishments, but in its ability to move the souls of ordinary
people, from all walks of life, to personally support the cause. King
said it this way, ''We will have to repent in this generation not merely
for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the
appalling silence of the good people." We can no longer afford to be
silent and do nothing regarding the cycle of violence. Our children
dying violent and unresolved deaths should be our Montgomery call afresh.
The Rev. Jeffrey L. Brown, pastor of the Union Baptist Church in
Cambridge, is co-founder of the Boston Ten Point Coalition.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/07/spiritual_discipline_against_intimidation/
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