[Mb-civic] Spiritual discipline against intimidation - The Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

  Spiritual discipline against intimidation

By Jeffrey L. Brown  |  January 7, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

IT HAS BEEN three weeks since four promising young men were brutally 
killed in my neighborhood. Though the incident received a flood of 
attention at the time, no suspects have been apprehended. No one has 
come forward with information or clues as to who could have committed 
such a heinous crime. What is most disturbing is that the event itself 
has now woven itself into the collective fabric of the community, and we 
have moved onto the next tragic killings. The images come all too 
frequently: The presence of yellow crime scene tape. Blood spilled on 
the ground. Hysterical family members and exasperated community 
residents in front of cameras. Caskets of young bodies carried out of 
churches and hoisted into hearses.

Inner cities now struggle with a form of gangsterism and criminality in 
which violence and terror from our own children are forms of social 
control. As a faith leader I've wrestled with this question: When do the 
rights of intimidators end, and the rights of frightened witnesses 
begin? With freedom of speech comes a corresponding ownership of social 
responsibility. I'm coming to the realization, however, that our latest 
controversy is merely an outgrowth of the deeper problem facing 
inner-city neighborhoods, not only here, but throughout the nation.

At issue is the mistaken notion that there is a difference between 
violent street life and other forms of community life; that when 
violence happens, as long as it is not on your doorstep, it can be 
ignored, endured, or tolerated. But the recent murders down the street 
from my house taught me two sobering lessons.

First, that the specter of violence gives no thought to race, social 
class, or neighborhood lines. The rise of homicides in our city is 
reminiscent of other violent surges in our past, and although the 
players change, it has the same paralyzing effect. Parents and 
grandparents are held prisoner in their homes, afraid to go a few steps 
away from their doors for fear of violence. Young people feel that they 
have to protect themselves by carrying weapons of their own. The flow of 
civic life gets rudely and abruptly interrupted by random, terrifying 
shootings. These conditions prove that violence has never been ''street 
business" alone. I recently heard a minister, paraphasing a biblical 
quote, say, ''A bullet is no respecter of persons."

The second lesson is that street life and community life are the same. I 
learned in my antiviolence work that the streets are not there to be 
''taken back" by good people. The streets were never taken from us in 
the first place. We abandon them as we move up in life, and hope that 
they do not disturb our personal or social progress when violence calls. 
When we turn our faces away, however, and block it from our minds, 
telling ourselves that it is no business of ours and it can't touch us, 
we give the cycle of violence new energy.

The atmosphere of violence and intimidation cannot be met with public 
apathy. Among other things, it must be met by a spiritual discipline 
that causes us to reject our fears and indifference in favor of an open 
and shared sense of interdependence. If we hold clergy accountable for 
their conduct around sexual abuse issues, and if we hold the police 
accountable for their conduct around racial profiling issues, then we 
must hold ourselves accountable for the children of our community, which 
means rejecting the culture of silence and intimidation.

Fifty years ago, a bus boycott occurred that began the death knell of 
segregation and discrimination based on race. In Montgomery, Ala., the 
names of Rosa Parks and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. became symbols 
of a nation confronting the social oppression of its time. The great 
lesson of the civil rights movement, however, was not in its legislative 
accomplishments, but in its ability to move the souls of ordinary 
people, from all walks of life, to personally support the cause. King 
said it this way, ''We will have to repent in this generation not merely 
for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the 
appalling silence of the good people." We can no longer afford to be 
silent and do nothing regarding the cycle of violence. Our children 
dying violent and unresolved deaths should be our Montgomery call afresh.

The Rev. Jeffrey L. Brown, pastor of the Union Baptist Church in 
Cambridge, is co-founder of the Boston Ten Point Coalition.  

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/07/spiritual_discipline_against_intimidation/
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