About a week ago a young man was working in his own front yard when a white man came up, started yelling, pushed him to the ground, and then shot him. "Go back to your own country," the attacker snarled. The victim is Sikh, whose religious customs require wearing a turban. They are often mistaken for Muslims. The victim survived and was able to describe the attack. The attacker, a complete stranger, has not been identified or found. Authorities are treating the incident as a hate crime.
This happened in Kent, WA, two or three towns south of Seattle. It wasn't the only incident lately. Just a couple days ago, a synagogue on the north end of Seattle had rightwing graffiti spraypainted on it. A couple months back, my stepson, Jamar, told me that where he works the two guys who share the office next to his are Mexicans. Since Trump's election there have been multiple incidents where white male customers have started shouting at his co-workers. In the five years they've worked together, this never happened until the election.
After the synagogue was defaced, a supportive neighbor hung a sheet over the paint, but the synagogue took the covering down. They want people to see what's going on. I'm reminded of Emmett Till's mother, insisting on an open casket funeral for her son. Don't look away, see what hate has done.
So when our neighbors told me there was going to be a rally down in Kent in response to the shooting of the Sikh, Kay and I carpooled down with them. Leaving Seattle, we felt like we were heading for the hinterlands. We talked on the way down about how glad we were to be going to a political event somewhere besides the Seattle core.
The rally was held indoors, in a Lutheran church. That was nice, because it was raining. About 500 people showed up. It was an assembly of every sort of religious garb, and every sort of ethnicity. There were young, old, men, women--every demographic and angle. It turns out that Kent, according to the mayor, when she addressed the crowd, is the 5th most diverse city of its size in America. I think she said students in the Kent School District speak 130 different languages at home.
One of the speakers remarked that in the old days in Kent, Swedes and Norwegians refused to live next to each other. Now, the city prides itself on its diversity, and the way they all get along. Speaker after speaker reaffirmed that "an injury to one is an injury to all." You'd have thought you were in the Longshoremen's union hall.
One minister put forward that the backdrop for all this is a battle between monopoly and equality. Other speakers repeated that theme in various ways. A black minister in his 50s was eloquent and articulate: "I'm the demographic most likely to be shot, either by some enraged white guy or by the police!" There was fire and outrage, but the event was overwhelmingly positive, the closing of ranks on the high road. It was all about the founding values of our country.
Years ago, when I was making videos of the Somali struggles in Seattle, I learned a humbling fact. Immigrants believe in the American Dream far more than the native-born. After all, they had to claw their way to our shores, and the dream that kept them going, through whatever they had to endure to get here, far exceeds any sort of economic opportunity. They came to be part of America the Beautiful, America the secular, the tolerant. They seek a life of freedom and security, and by their very presence here, we know they're not quitters. That reality was on full display down in Kent. Nobody appreciates or loves America more than the recently arrived.
At a certain point in the program, a representative of the Church Council of Greater Seattle read and presented a letter signed by 200 or or more clergy in the region, all of whom presumably thundered out the call of unity to their respective congregations over the weekend.
I'm sure that the City of Kent is not alone as it rallies to defend the full flavor of life in this country. No doubt all across the land events just like this are blossoming forth. People get ready, there's a train a comin'. As we drove back to Seattle, I remarked that I went down to Kent to give them a little solace, and found, instead, that I was the one uplifted. Best afternoon I've spent in quite a while.
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