http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1423126.html
That was the night I was to go biking with my book-club buddies, and most likely we would have been in the same area as this incident. Any seeming act of random violence seems worse than violence where victim and victimizer knew each other. Add to that the fact that the victim was a cyclist and it happened in my neighborhood, and now I guess I'm supposed to be more vigilant, but it just makes me angry. I'm angry that someone was killed. I'm angry that the perception of my neighborhood is that it is overly dangerous. I'm angry that because this has happened, I'm supposed to be more cautious or that I'm putting my family at risk by living here. (For those of you with sensitive eyes or ears, please stop reading now, you'll be offended.)
Fuck all that. I am not making any drastic changes because of this. We've lived here for 9 years with absolutely no problems at all. I have walked the streets at 1 am and later and have never been bothered. (When I worked at the hospital, I would take the bus home from my evening shift.) I refuse to live in fear. I like my neighborhood. I like the fact that we are centrally located in the city. I like it that many of our friends are living within 4 blocks of us. I suppose if I wanted to live a life with less "risk" I would move out of the city and I would stop riding my bike on any roads I had to share with cars, but I don't want to do either of those things. There is that old saw from FDR's inaugural, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." I'm coming to understand the profundity of that statement more and more. Not only because of where my family lives, but because of the times we all live in. This whole "war on terror" is complete and utter bullshit. Thousands upon thousands of lives lost. Billions and billions of dollars wasted on a senseless war. And for what? What is it that we really fear? Death? Economic hardship? What? Islamic take-over of the country? Loss of our "freedom?" (If freedom is your answer, I hope you have been dead set against the Patriot Act from the beginning.) I am personally sick of being told that everything we know and love is being threatened by an amorphous enemy, but to allay our fears we must declare and sustain a war against a people that never attacked us and never even posed a threat to us. And even if something terrible did happen, would it be our ultimate demise? We survived 9/11 didn't we? What have we got to fear?
OK end of rambling rant.
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5 comments:
Well, WE survived 9/11, but over 2,000 innocent people did not.
I'm guessing that some people fear another act of terrorism of that magnitude will hit closer to home. Just like there may be some people who witness a "seeming act of random violence" in their neighborhood and worry that next time it might hit closer to home. And to be honest, if something like that happened in my neighborhood, I'd be scared into being more vigilant and making changes, too. Does that mean I'd be living in fear? Not necessarily.
So what's the difference between being scared (your word) into making a change and living in fear? I'm not sure I understand. Fear and irrationality go hand in hand. We've been told to fear the terrorists (just drive by the airport, we are constantly at code orange) so we allow the administration to subvert the Constitution (suspend habeus corpus or allow unlimited wiretapping). To me that is irrational response to a bogus threat. And why would we be fearful in the Twin Cities of dying by the hands of Islamic terrorists. I honestly don't get it. Every so-called domestic "terrorist" plot that the FBI has broken up in the past 6 years has been a total joke, but the administration trumps it up so that we will be fearful, and thus they manipulate us in our irrationality. It's just like my being irrationally fearful of being murdered in my neighborhood because someone else was murdered there. Now if there were multiple murders and the perpetrators were targeting white males, riding their bikes at night, then I might live in fear, but it wouldn't be irrational because there is reason to believe that I'm at greater risk.
Glad to see you've recovered from the bout of illness earlier in the week.
Wow! You put a lot of topics on the plate with this post. Where to begin?
This is a horrible incident, and it makes me sick. Has there been more to the story? Is it as random as the first article presented? The randomness does make it scary, but I don't think urban areas have a lock on random violence. I'm reminded of case last year where someone was killed on a bike trail out in suburban Atlanta, and of a family friend biking across the country who was hit by a baseball bat swung by someone in a passing truck in rural Michigan. Random is random, right? Anytime and anyplace no matter what the factors.
I also was thinking about the ways the "city" is always this imagined geography of safe and not-safe and how people come to see places as dangerous. Back in 1961, Jane Jacobs explained this topic perfectly in her _The Death and Life of Great American Cities_: "Today barbarism has taken over many city streets, or people fear it has, which comes to mean much of the same thing in the end... And as they fear [streets and sidewalks], they use them less, which makes the streets still more unsafe" (30).
What keeps streets safe? People. People being neighborly, people who walk, ride bikes, visit, sit on porches, and yes, people who are vigilant and on the look out for what goes on their neighborhood. I don't think this vigilance needs to be rooted in paranoia. Of course, and this is another topic entirely, one necessary factor in all of this is community (and people's sense of belonging).
I did wonder about your link between the fear people have of place and the fear of terrorism. I understand that fear's argument is emotional and non-rational, but I think it's stronger than that. War on the city--as it took form in the war on drugs (don't read that as a pro-drug position, please), Giuliani's *reforms* in NYC, or even the war on rundown neighborhoods via current policy in urban redevelopment--played/plays on the same types of fears: the carjacker or the "Islamic fascist" are going to get you if you don't support the "War on X."
That the administrations' (this and earlier) only response is to always declare war, a destructive force, I think says more about the direction of this country than anything else.
If I start wearing my seat belt regularly after being in a car accident, I'm scared into making a change, but by wearing my seat belt, does that mean I'm living in fear that I might otherwise die?
If I make my kids wear helmets whenever they ride their bikes, even though none of them has ever wiped out, nor has anyone in my neighborhood ever sustained a head injury from a bike accident, am I being irrationally fearful? Is this irrational fear being fueled by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends all children wear bike helmets?
Am I living in fear if I make sure my children get flu shots in the fall after a flu epidemic the previous year results in an unusual number of deaths? Or, because my kids have never gotten the flu, should I forego the shots because we've had "absolutely no problems at all?"
If I start locking my doors at night when I move to the suburbs (or the city), after living in a small town where we never locked our doors, does that mean I'm living in fear? Or am I making smarter choices based on the crime statistics for that area and the fact that I'm living in a more populated neighborhood? Granted, one might claim that it would be a smart choice to lock your door at night wherever you live, but wouldn't that be living in fear?
I would contend that the choices I'm making (to wear a seat belt or bike helmet, to get flu shots, to lock my doors at night) are increased vigilance. I don't feel resentful about making these choices, nor do I feel I'm living in fear that something terrible might happen to my family if I don't do these things. I do these things because they are smart choices.
If someone was randomly murdered in my neighborhood, or killed by a stray bullet intended for someone else, would I make changes in my life? Probably. I might choose not to be wandering the streets at 1 a.m. or riding my bike through less familiar neighborhoods after dark.
After that young woman in Hallock was abducted and murdered while rollerblading on a country road, you can bet that I made changes in my own habit of taking long walks in isolated rural areas. I didn't stop walking. But I changed my routes to avoid long stretches of roadway that are seldom traveled and have no houses along them and I became more vigilant about the traffic that passes by. By making these better choices, I think I've improved my chances of staying safe. Am I living in irrational fear?
I think a definition of "fear" is needed here because I do not think you can group "being cautious" or "being aware of your surroundings in order to be safe" with the fear that results in inaction or in lashing out in anger.
Technically speaking, arguments solely based in fear--like any argument based solely in emotion--are non-rational appeals.
Those non-rational appeals are made quite often in arguments about how unsafe cities have become--arguments which often resort to generalizations and stereotypes to make their "point."
And these non-rational appeals have been used to unnecessarily strip away certain rights and laws in this country in the wake of 9-11. The current administration played on people's fears of terrorism to make a move to increase their branch's power, particularly within the justice department. Instead of logically arguing their point and advocating for what powers they wanted--a process that would require explanation, answering questions, and considering other points of view--they played on people's emotions to make their point. "Fear of terrorism" became the argument, not "we need these powers because...."
I would contend that recognizing a non-safe situation is not the same as fear. The former falls under rational, while the latter is irrational.
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