Some of you may recall hearing the eminent evangelist and social justice activist Tony Campolo say the following before a speech to thousands of evangelical Christians gathered at a major event:
"I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a shit. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said 'shit' than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night."
(Dr. Campolo, as many of you may know, is not only a powerful orator [one of the best I've ever heard], he was a spiritual advisor to President Bill Clinton [along with famed evangelical pastor Gordon MacDonald, I believe]. And he is an amazingly funny man. If memory serves me well, he has been a professor not only of sociology but philosophy [yeah!].)
My quoting Dr. Campolo has nothing to do with Dr. Campolo or hunger or obscenity, though I am interested in the obscenity which is, often, our misplaced priorities; nay, I am interested in my misplaced priorities. Just read this story in the Boston Herald of a mother who has lost her second son to violence, no, not in Iraq or Afghanistan, but in Boston. The Herald's lead is wrenching:
"An inspiring Dorchester mother who spent the past decade dignifying her slain son’s memory by being a soldier of peace for Cape Verdean youths could not save herself from losing a second son to street violence."
My own reaction to this news is visceral, in the gut. Indeed, it is like a kick in the gut, partly because I am reminded of how little I often care, not about violence and death and war in faraway lands, but about my own neighbor.
I have written at Contratimes about "quagmire." I have written about the misplaced priorities of war-protesters (though I am not against such protests). And I have written, perhaps with every keystroke, about my own wicked indifference to the sufferings and problems of the people living as faraway from me as the next yard. In other words, Tony Campolo, I have to admit, is right.
Perhaps as a result of this most recent murder the quagmire which is Boston will now be energized to become as just of a city as many of its citizens would wish the White House would become as an Adminstration. Perhaps tomorrow the streets will be jammed with protestors calling for the ousting of the defense secretary, I mean, the police commissioner; perhaps the city will be quaking from sill to rafter with calls for the impeachment (for neglect, carelessness and ineptitude) of the presiding mayor of Beantown. Perhaps Harvard and B.U. will pull students from classes to show solidarity with the oppressed citizens of a town where there has been "seven murders in seven days". Perhaps the intelligentsia of the nation's most liberal city (well, almost) will gather together today to provide New England's Hub some sort of exit strategy; or at least some guidance for the city's intelligence services, i.e. the city's homicide bureau, which the Boston Phoenix has reported as the "worst homicide squad in the country."
Just this sentence alone from the Phoenix' August 2005 report should be a signal that all is not well in Boston:
"The portions of Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury ... make up a tiny area, roughly two miles by three. There have been 38 unsolved murders there in the past year and a half, and 61 since the start of 2002."
SIXTY-ONE UNSOLVED MURDERS IN SIX SQUARE MILES! Where is the outrage? (I mean, if you're not outraged, you are not paying attention: this is New England's own sort of Sunni Triangle.)
The number of murders in the United States annually, numbering in the tens of thousands, has even prompted Chinese officials and journalists to wonder about the loveliness of domestic life in the United States. Is America its own sort of quagmire? If so, where is the exit strategy from violence and why do we not see more protestations over the death of little boys and girls? Why the passion about outsiders' sufferings, such as the Iraqis (which are real passions and real sufferings), and yet so little daily commentary about murder and mayhem in America's urban areas (the murder rate is declining in non-metropolitan areas)? Where are the blogs that are stewing daily, hourly, about the quagmire and abusers of human rights which may indeed be the most liberal cities of our nation?
Where, where, is the outrage?
My prayers go toward Boston today.
Peace.
[addendum 5.9.06: Apparently the city of Boston is going to do something about recent violence. Part of the solution in that town is to install more surveillance cameras in the troubled neighborhoods, which is, apparently, a suitable Orwellian solution. Of course, I am sure there will be some protest over the cameras.]
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Related essay: "Sleepless in America"
Technorati tags: Boston, Domestic violence, street violence, Iraq, Exit strategy, US murder rates, Tony Campolo
6 comments:
Great post.
You're absolutely right. All these things are outrageous. What I wrestle with is what to do about it. Where do you even begin?
This hit home recently for us. Just last week in the next canton a man killed his wife, brother-in-law and severly wounded his mother-in-law before killing himself a day later. There is outrage now, because this is so uncommon.
I think the more I get used to evil, the more I tolerate it. If preachers said "shit" more during their sermons, people would, over time, be less upset about it.
I am sorry to hear, Brady, of the tragedy near you. What sorrow.
As for Mark's question as to where we should begin, I have only one answer (at the risk of sounding trite or glib): we must begin in our hearts and in our homes. And then we go help our neighbors. (Does this suggest American isolationism? Perhaps. But it certainly refers to Jesus' exhortation that we remove the planks from our own eyes before we remove the specks from our neighbors'. BUT sometimes you have to take a moral stand even when you are not morally perfect. Moral action sometimes needs to be swift, even perhaps before we are able to get our own 'sh*t' in order, so to speak.)
Peace to you both, and to Scott as well.
Gnade
I love this country. I've lived in quite a few and there is no place like America. And yet, what's wrong here? It isn't the guns. In some perverse way, it seems that the more guns, the less crime (arguable, I admit). What I mean is this: even with guns removed from the crime figures, Americans kill each other with all kinds of implements -- including their hands -- more than any other nation.
Is it our insane drug laws; the new prohibition? Is it moral collapse?
And this, in the country that gives more, cares more, and acts more in behalf of justice and charity than any other.
What gives?
Thanks for your post. As always.
Oh.... The poor woman! Her poor husband.
Again... very powerful writing, BG.
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