But of course it is not harmless. It is an aspect of the “war on terror” that began at home and continues at home with no end in sight. (I’m putting the phrase in quotes because a commenter on the NPR program “Counterspin” said she noticed that when the quotation marks disappeared in news stories, it seemed to her that the war became permanent.)
And then I got a voicemail from the woman who lives in this house, telling me that she’s seen a truck stopping outside while apparently someone in the truck was taking a photograph of her house. She wants to know if I’ve seen this truck, and she is calling all our neighbors to raise the alarm.
Trucks here and elsewhere are often driven by working men and here in the Southwest many of our workers are Spanish speaking and some without doubt are what we call undocumented.
Did the woman behind the phone call and the disembodied voice think of this or reflect on the fact that before our neighborhood became the roost of millionaires, it was for generations home to Spanish-speaking working-class families?
So easily has our terror, bred from the so-called “War on Terror,” (really a war on Muslims) penetrated our fabric. A book has just been published called Innocent Until Proved Muslim. The misinformation about this faith is widespread and unquestioned, linking it to institutional violence. But it is our government and to some extent our citizens who are wedded to violence in all its forms: police murders of innocent black men, hideous treatment in our prisons and jails, guns everywhere and proliferating, unending international wars.
Our Governor recently passed an executive order banning carrying guns in our largest city for a month due to the number of murders there; it met with such powerful opposition that she rescinded it. And yet it was a common sense initiative that I would expect all reasonable people to support—but not the men who carry guns.
I don’t believe most women are cowards yet a plethora of news stories links women to over-reacting in ambiguous situations; we are the ones who often call the police, making matters worse.
This contemporary problem has long roots here and elsewhere. No one commented on the change in this town when walls went up around houses and driveway gates were installed. No one remembers the way everything changed here with the arrival of so many newcomers from both coasts.
But newcomers have always been coming here for many reasons. Decades ago, a well-known photographer, Laura Gilpin, who lived on my street, called police when she saw some perhaps Hispanic boys riding their bikes; one of them told me recently with a smile that they were visiting what they remembered as their grandparents’ neighborhood.
I wish I’d had the gumption to tell my neighbor when she called about the truck that I would never help her with her surveillance. I wish I wouldn’t have minded if she had been embarrassed or angry. But of course as a member of the invading horde, I’m also responsible.
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