grim amusements / Thursday, September 13, 2001

Thursday, 09/13/2001

and still it continues

A digression (yes, before the main entry): The city of Chesterton, Indiana, has decided that it should go on with its Wizard of Oz Festival, since it's largely kid-oriented, and they think that people need the event, need some return to normality. (The Wizard of Oz? Normal? ... Whatever.) So the festival will go on. But No Chicago Drag Queens! Apparently, they're "off color" and "inappropriate". What the fuck? (Oh, dear, that was offcolor, wasn't it?) In the meantime, Munchkins are traveling out from California and Texas. (Really, that's what it says.)

In Palos Heights, [a suburb of Chicago] a Worth man was charged with a hate crime after he allegedly used a 2-foot machete to attack a gas station attendant he thought was of Arab descent, police said. [...] A noisy crowd of young people shouting anti-Arabic insults began a late-night march Wednesday on a Bridgeview mosque but were contained by as many as 125 police officers on a Harlem Avenue streetcorner, where a demonstration lasted past midnight.

9:31pm: According to Fox News Chicago, the same man attacked by the machete was attacked a second time tonight by a completely different person. And outside the mosque in Bridgeview, we have a truly massive anti-Moslem rally, lins of cars passing and honking to support the protesters, which include skinheads waving Confederate flags.

Gary police are also investigating two reports of damage at Arab-American owned gasoline stations, including one that was racked by gunfire Wednesday.

One of my coworkers is an Arab-American. Frankly, I never think of him that way. He was born and raised in this country, and I think of him as the quintessential California dude. You couldn't get much more dude-like, really; never wears slacks if he can wear jeans, never wears jeans if he can wear shorts, never wears shoes if he can wear sneakers, never wears sneakers if he can wear sandals ... And once he opens his mouth, people blocks away look at him and say, "You're from California, aren't you?" He's just a dude.

I overheard a conversation he was having with someone yesterday. Wasn't trying to eavesdrop; after all, we were working and they were both working in the room with me. He was talking about having been yelled at and spit at and threatened as he walked through the Institution to work. And honestly, I couldn't imagine why at first. Why would people from Chicago be all that exercised about some Californian? And then I realized that if your name is Muhamed or Ali or something like that, it's not going to matter where you're from. The only thing that matters is what you look like.

The Sikhs on campus have been threatened. The Sikhs. Anyone in a turban, I guess. The Muslim women are going about in these terrified clusters, looking at everyone as if they're about to be physically attacked at any moment.

There's a little corner store in my neighborhood. Run by a family of Turks, I believe. It's always been jumping, kids in and out getting candy and ice cream, people in the neighborhood stopping in for food or for a chat, the guys from the family that runs it talking it up between themselves ... it's been a very grim place this week. At first, of course, just because grim things were happening, but then things changed. Now it's quiet and they look just as scared as the women on campus.

I don't think that I have much else to say about this event, and there's other news out there. Other current events. And I'm tired of noting the appalling behavior of my countrymen at a time when they should do better. They know better.

And, in fact, there are other events. Other happenings. Even other plane crashes, as bizarre a concept as that seems.

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Thursday, 09/13/2001

and still it continues

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