A Call To Arms

FORUM: RACISM IN AMERICA

A Call to Arms

   LA's burning. This is your wake-up call. The horrors in Southern California have shaken a somnambulent nation into realizing that something is wrong. The riots were not a nightmare to wake up from, but part of a continuing reality. The reality is racial conflict, police brutality and poor people fighting to grab onto materialism's coat tails. To some, LA seems as far off as Bosnja or Azerbaijan. But the war is here. It has already been declared, like it or not. The question is, how to fight it?   

  The aftermath of the riots is shaping into a war between government - cops, judges and politicians - and the people. The government would like to make "law and order" the central theme. They define it as more police power, confiscation of individuals' property and longer jail terms. Poverty helped cause the riots, but to see it as a problem for poor people is to fall into a divide-and-rule trap. If the media debate is waged by the Republican National Committee's lawyers and ad execs versus uneducated poor people, with Middle America watching on TV, guess who will win?

  In a nation so well-informed, there is an amazing lack of communication. You know all about "The Other America." You saw it on cable news. Time told you all about it. If you need more info, consult your database. Just the fax, please. If you're brave, you've even gone to Detroit and seen it up close and personal, from inside your car. But would you get out and talk to "those people?" Before LA? Now? Detroit is so different from Ann Arbor that it' s almost a cliche. It is an icon, an image that pops up now and then like a recurring dream. How well do you know the people who live there? How well do they know you?

  You don't have to go to Detroit to meet people in different circumstances. There are all sorts of realities here in Ann Arbor. Neighborhoods are insular. Life is different on one side of S. Maple Rd. than on the other. Or on Green Road. Ann Arborites meet in the workplace but go home to very different living situations. Neighborly relations are shallow, tenuous or non-existent. People don't know their neighbors. They just drive by, maybe wave.

   To build a better America, we must talk to our neighbors - next door, in the next subdivision, in the next town. Talk about local issues, about poverty (yes, right here in A A!), about the police, about each other's lives. Don't be afraid to talk to "strangers." Don't panic if somebody you don't know wants to chat with you.

   These "other people" are every where: in the supermarket, on the street, in school, in the park. There are community organizations to join. Wake up and use your arms, to shake your neighbor's hand, to build Ann Arbor, to build understanding among us. That's ALL of us, not just the ones who live in "safe" neighborhoods.

   Everybody - including the forgotten who must cease to be so - has to get together, to use their arms, to fight for justice and understanding. Fighting against the system isn't enough. You have to know what you're fighting for. And that's hard to know unless you know and understand your neighbors.