Like Gary Hover, I to am struck by the responses, or lack of them, of list members to events.
In response to a "Pedestrian Killed" Gary says, "First, I am struck by how any post to an e-mail list such as this can be a bit of an electronic Rorshach test. Not that responses relate to "emotional and intellectual functioning and integration" in a formal or clinical way, but we sure do learn about each other. Not only that, but our responses to events such as vehicular homicide bring out what is in us as well." The number of responses and the emotions evoked were truly amazing. One of the amazing things was the apparent anti-police bias that some have. Another troubling aspect of the amount and emotional nature of the responses was how it showed the tendencies of people to be outraged only by those things that they identify as being a threat to them or theirs, but ignore those things that may affect others who the person has no ability to identify with. This stream of posts started with an inquiry for information about the situation. Apparently, no one had that specific information for a while. This did not seem to impede the moral outrage at the police department, careless drivers, SUV drivers, MnDot, or the Legislature and City Council for not creating harsher laws to protect innocent people. For a couple of people it even became a classist conspiracy because the person may have been a person of color or poor. I do not mean that people should not identify with the unfortunate victim or her family, I am happy to see this. I do wish some of the posters would use the list as an expression of that sorrow and identification until they have further information. I am also struck by the seeming inequity of response as compared to another post, which asked a similar question about nine months ago. I am struck by the seeming inability to identify with or care about another kind of person. In April a poster notified the list that a fifteen-year-old child had been assassinated at the Super America on 25th and Bloomington, seemingly in a gang shooting. The poster asked for similar information to the "MPLS Pedestrian killed" post. NO ONE responded with any outrage what so ever! It was a black child who apparently had been engaged in drug trafficking, and it was an execution that occured in a poor neighborhood where such things apparently are not unexpected. However it was still a child and the child of some family. Yet NO outrage. The true outrage may be that people just did not care because they apparently had no ability to identify with that child or that child's family. List members, it would appear, place a much higher priority on police response to traffic violations than they do to the murder of children in poor communities. Is this because such enforcement may affect them personally, but they cannot see how drug related murder could ever affect them? Or because the fifteen year old put himself out of even consideration by his drug and gang activity? Even without consideration for the child you would suppose someone might have the ability to have consideration for the community where it occured. But no, not much comment on that either. I guess such things are expected in such communities. The failure of List members to have consideration for such communities is probably indicative of Minneapolis as a whole. We have limited ability to be outraged by what happens to "those" people. It is only when something might happen to "US" that we get upset. The police have limited resources and they need to address the real concerns of Minneapolitans rather than "those" people. Since addressing both might raise our taxes, we need to remind the police where their true duty lies. If the irony of the above is lost on some, I apologize. I happen to be someone who cares what happed to that fifteen-year-old child. This is possibly because I had met him, but hopefully because he was a human child. I also happen to believe that if the whole Minneapolis community had been outraged by that killing last April, we possibly would have demanded the areas drug gangs be addressed by more police resources. We will never know for sure, but possibly this attention would have prevented the Tyesha incident. The reason drug and gang activity is so prevalent in those areas of Minneapolis is that the "Good" people of Minneapolis just do not care enough to demand the politicians stop it. I guess the difference is "WHOM" you identify with, and what is outrageous to you. I sure hope we all learn to care a little more in the coming year. Politicians sure do not seem to care if we "good people" don't. Happy Holidays to all, Jim Graham, Ventura Village and the herd of human _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
