Who can bring Americans together to heal the wounds of racism, crime and gun violence? Will it be Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump or some other politician? Politicians have big ideas but they have limitations. Bringing Americans together can be accomplished by, "We the People!"
In 1970, a suburban community of 17,500 residents lacked a local police department and they had a CRIME PROBLEM. A committee of ten volunteers struggled to get residents to attend community meetings to discuss how to stop neighborhood crime. As a pilot program, volunteers developed a plan to help neighbors work together because most of their burglaries were committed by local teens. Although the local newspaper supported the project, only a few people attended.
Community meetings were overflowing after a teenager discovered his mother murdered in her kitchen. Citizens were fearful and turned out to demand more police protection. The county supervisor and sheriff told residents they lacked the funds for more police. The pilot program began with the cooperation from the county sheriff. An officer would attend every neighborhood meeting to help educate residents about local crime and encourage neighbors to be on the alert for suspicious activities. Concerned citizens got involved in the "Neighborhood Responsibility Program." Within two and a half years, crime was reduced 48%. (a) At the same time, crime was on the increase in other communities.
Several committee members spoke on TV and radio while others went on to became trainers and coordinators for the California State Office of Criminal Justice Planning.
Much to the surprise of experienced volunteers, county police departments resisted citizen leaders stating, they would become vigilantes. The volunteers were also told that citizen direction wouldn't work in cities.
The naysayers were proven wrong when an organized group of citizens received a grant from the California Office of Criminal Justice Planning and formed the Citizen's Crime Prevention Committee of Contra Costa County , CA. Without police leadership, six crime prevention coordinators organized and trained 27 volunteer committees throughout the county. The county committee worked independently of police and had their own office and staff support. Coordinators worked in their assigned cities and met weekly with each other to problem solve. They held monthly meetings with volunteers and published a county newsletter with accomplishments and projects to help people learn from each other. Citizen involvement helped stop the spread of crime, drugs, gangs and juvenile violence throughout the county.
The job of police is to react to crime while citizen involvement can prevent crime. Over the years, many police departments worked with citizens. However, in the field of crime prevention, citizens without police leaders are uncommon. There are many benefits for training citizen coordinators. In areas where residents are too scared to share information with police, they will talk to trusted citizen coordinators. Trained citizens have the ability to educate and change attitudes within their neighborhoods where they speak the language and care about families and youth.
Today, cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, Chicago and Detroit need citizen leaders to assume more responsibility for city safety by helping create a healthy balance between citizens and police. City leaders need to support trained coordinators to prevent crime and corruption.
Encouraging and developing citizen leaders to help bring people together should be top priority in every city if we are going to stop hostility toward police, racism, crime and gun violence.
This article is brought to you by Kokula Krishna Hari Kunasekaran! Visit Website or Follow back at @kkkhari
Making Intolerance and the Intolerant Intolerable
Yes, I know … The subtitle of this article is a paradox. But since I am supposedly capable of holding multiple perspectives at the same time, I'm perfectly fine with it, especially for the purposes of this article
"The Shadow In America: Reclaiming the Soul of a Nation," was first published in 1994. Compiled by Jeremiah Abrams with a foreword by Thomas Moore, and with contributions by Abrams, Jacquelyn Small, Aaron Kipnis, Robert Bly, and others, it presented an optimistic view of the firm ground needed to strip away the darkness that hides our country darker soul: racism.
Twenty-plus years later, that optimistic view and the dream of unity has been stripped away and has been replaced by the original sin of "separation," the polar opposite views of American Exceptionalism, increasing intolerance against anyone deemed an "other," not like us, and fear of "those people." When did we become such cowards?
It's easy to blame the racist rants of leaders who loudly denigrate the "others," but if leaders weren't supported by a large number of people, they wouldn't be able to get away with it. A leader and a large number of people and their shadow / hatred / fear of the "other" – spurred on by the silence of those who may not agree but are afraid to speak up – encourage their hatred to feed upon one another.
Is America standing on the precipice of a new civil war, or are we witnessing the death throes of the hatred-based systems of white supremacists, white nationalists, and neo-Nazis?
In 2014, America's Southern Poverty Center said the number of hate groups in the US was up from 602 in 2000, to more than 930 at the end of 2014.
Today the SPLC tracks more than 1600 extremist groups in the country.
And while a NBC Political Unit Poll on August 21st – taken a week after his first speech on Charlottesville – shows President Donald Trump's overall poll numbers are slipping again, what is particularly disturbing in the state-by-state polls is the percentage of Americans who approve of his job rating, ranging from 25 to 56 percent.
One cannot help but remember the words, spoken by Joseph Nye Welch to Senator Joe McCarthy in 1954 as we look today at a president who offer support to the abominable free speech rhetoric of those who were again inciting violence and urging extinction to Jews, including the President's Jewish son-in-law and daughter who became Jewish upon their marriage:
"Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
Trump was saying – not once, but twice – that both sides were to blame for the violence that led a white nationalist to plow his car into a crowd of counter-protesters killing Heather Heyer. The poll numbers are even more disturbing: While 55 percent of voters disapproved of Trump's response, an astonishing 34 percent of those voters approved of his response.
What can we extrapolate from the 34 percent approval rating of his statement?
It is not a stretch to assume that 34% – or one-third – of voters are, at some level, sympathetic to the white supremacist / neo-Nazi / white nationalist position. Could it be true, that in the 21st Century, one-third of voting adults in the US essentially support white supremacy?
Linguist George Lakoff places those who believe in white power and racial superiority at 35 percent of the country. In other words, the moral universe where male-led white supremacy thrives is rooted in a sobering significant portion of the country.
According to an AlterNet article titled "The Spread of White Nationalism Is Taking Our Nation into Uncharted and Dangerous Territory," it may take three or more decades for American demographics to change (when non-whites become a majority) to surmount this latest eruption of white supremacy. In the meantime, with one-third of our country eager to enter those unchartered and dangerous waters, with permission from the President of the United States, no less, we are witnessing an unraveling, and it's only beginning.
A deeper look into these demographics of racism and authoritarianism reveal how a global rise in authoritarian leadership is all too eager to promote fear of "the other" to their racist bases. Authoritarian leaders, who may or may not be racist themselves, use their racist base to take more and more control.
I'm not naïve enough to think that it's possible to completely stamp out hatred and racial intolerance, any more than it's possible to stamp out authoritarianism, but if the majority of us want to live in a better world, then we have no choice but to make intolerance intolerable, and we need to start now … and that includes taking responsibility for the indigenous genocide over the founding of this country.
… and the only way to do that is to start winning elections.
(Now, about that paradox … just one more variation of yelling "fire!" In a crowded theater: You can think it, but you can't say it, a conservative's nightmare.)
This article is brought to you by Kokula Krishna Hari Kunasekaran! Visit Website or Follow back at @kkkhari
Making Intolerance and the Intolerant Intolerable
Yes, I know… The subtitle of this article is a paradox. But since I am supposedly capable of holding multiple perspectives at the same time, I’m perfectly fine with it, especially for the purposes of this article
“The Shadow In America: Reclaiming the Soul of a Nation,” was first published in 1994. Compiled by Jeremiah Abrams with a foreword by Thomas Moore, and with contributions by Abrams, Jacquelyn Small, Aaron Kipnis, Robert Bly, and others, it presented an optimistic view of the firm ground needed to strip away the darkness that hides our country’s darker soul: racism.
Twenty-plus years later, that optimistic view and the dream of unity has been stripped away and has been replaced by the original sin of “separation,” the polar opposite views of American Exceptionalism, increasing intolerance against anyone deemed an “other,” not like us, and fear of “those people.” When did we become such cowards?
It’s easy to blame the racist rants of leaders who loudly denigrate the “others,” but if leaders weren’t supported by a large number of people, they wouldn’t be able to get away with it. A leader and a large number of people and their shadow/hatred/fear of the “other”- spurred on by the silence of those who may not agree but are afraid to speak up – encourage their hatred to feed upon one another.
Is America standing on the precipice of a new civil war, or are we witnessing the death throes of the hatred-based systems of white supremacists, white nationalists, and neo-Nazis?
In 2014, America’s Southern Poverty Center said the number of hate groups in the U.S. was up from 602 in 2000, to more than 930 at the end of 2014.
Today the SPLC tracks more than 1600 extremist groups in the country.
And while a NBC Political Unit Poll on August 21st – taken a week after his first speech on Charlottesville – shows President Donald Trump’s overall poll numbers are slipping again, what is particularly disturbing in the state-by-state polls is the percentage of Americans who approve of his job rating, ranging from 25 to 56 percent.
One cannot help but remember the words, spoken by Joseph Nye Welch to Senator Joe McCarthy in 1954 as we look today at a president who offer support to the abominable free speech rhetoric of those who were again inciting violence and urging extinction to Jews, including the President’s Jewish son-in-law and daughter who became Jewish upon their marriage:
“Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Trump was saying – not once, but twice – that both sides were to blame for the violence that led a white nationalist to plow his car into a crowd of counter-protesters killing Heather Heyer. The poll numbers are even more disturbing: While 55 percent of voters disapproved of Trump’s response, an astonishing 34 percent of those voters approved of his response.
What can we extrapolate from the 34 percent approval rating of his statement?
It is not a stretch to assume that 34% – or one-third – of voters are, at some level, sympathetic to the white supremacist/neo-Nazi/white nationalist position. Could it be true, that in the 21st Century, one-third of voting adults in the U.S. essentially support white supremacy?
Linguist George Lakoff places those who believe in white power and racial superiority at 35 percent of the country. In other words, the moral universe where male-led white supremacy thrives is rooted in a sobering significant portion of the country.
According to an AlterNet article titled “The Spread of White Nationalism Is Taking Our Nation into Uncharted and Dangerous Territory,” it may take three or more decades for American demographics to change (when non-whites become a majority) to surmount this latest eruption of white supremacy. In the meantime, with one-third of our country eager to enter those unchartered and dangerous waters, with permission from the President of the United States, no less, we are witnessing an unraveling, and it’s only beginning.
A deeper look into these demographics of racism and authoritarianism reveal how a global rise in authoritarian leadership is all too eager to promote fear of “the other” to their racist bases. Authoritarian leaders, who may or may not be racist themselves, use their racist base to take more and more control.
I’m not naïve enough to think that it’s possible to completely stamp out hatred and racial intolerance, any more than it’s possible to stamp out authoritarianism, but if the majority of us want to live in a better world, then we have no choice but to make intolerance intolerable, and we need to start now… and that includes taking responsibility for the indigenous genocide over the founding of this country.
… and the only way to do that is to start winning elections.
(Now, about that paradox… just one more variation of yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater: You can think it, but you can’t say it, a conservative’s nightmare.)
This article is brought to you by Kokula Krishna Hari Kunasekaran! Visit Website or Follow back at @kkkhari