What a week, last week. Angry white man mails 14 pipe bombs to top leaders of the Democratic party plus CNN, a liberal philanthropist, and an actor. Oddly, this is the same hit list the president calls on in his raucous, sometimes frightening rallies across the country. Days later another angry white man attempts to attack an African American church, but fails, only to go to a supermarket and kill two people there. And on Saturday, another angry white man attacks a Jewish synagogue during services, killing eleven worshipers. The president, unable to stick to his teleprompter, blames the victims for not having armed guards protecting the congregation. In other words: right of way belongs to the shooter.
Where have we heard this before? In the Kavanaugh hearings we learned that right of way belongs to the would-be rapist. If the victim didn’t run immediately to the police, or if she doesn’t remember the address where the attack happened, then not only is the accusation unproven, the accused is proven innocent. There will always be a mitigating “if,” because in Trump’s view, right of way belongs to the white male. Period.
Okay, how did our regional leadership respond to these events? Did Congressperson Tom Reed offer his female constituents any kind of reassurance that would help to break the silence we all maintain as the bitter pill, the only option, when recovering from sexual discrimination or assault? No.
Did he decry political violence as un-American and unworthy
of his party? No. Tom Reed’s response to our current political malaise is to
run an ad full of lies so brazen that anyone who knows anything about Tracy
Mitrano is almost forced to laugh out loud. But the ad ends with images of a
computer monitor, on which Mitrano’s face appears, being thrown through a
second-story window, then smashed by someone wielding the keyboard, and a
hammer thrown on the pile for good measure. What about the safety of people
passing by on the street? What about civility in our body politic? Too bad: right
of way to the angry white man.
This isn’t the America for which our fathers and grandfathers
fought and died 75 years ago. It is, sad to say, the America millions of
indigenous people, African Americans, LGBTQ, and women have died for. This
America’s byword is All White Men Are Created Special. (Everybody else, dog eat
dog.)
We seem to be on a precipice. I’ve been on a precipice myself
before, and I know it takes real determination to get back to safety. Let me
suggest something.
The Haudenosaunee (also known as Iroquois) Nation, right
here in New York State, has a well-worn tradition that I believe could help us now.
It is called a Thanksgiving Prayer. Most
Americans take one day each year to come together and share our thanks for the
blessings that surround us. Members of the Haudenosaunee tribes do this every
time they gather. In a series of poetic pronouncements they thank the Earth
under their feet for the food it grows; the water for nourishing life; in turn
the wind, the sky, the animals, the sun, the moon, and so on. After each
message of gratitude, they declare, “Now our minds are one.”Imagine it. Here’s where we stand. Here’s what we have to be grateful for. And now our minds are one. It would be hard to turn on each other after an invocation like that.
I would like to point out that the huge crowd in Pittsburgh
that gathered on Saturday night shared their grief over the synagogue shootings
with a chant. Did they call for revenge? No. They chanted, “VOTE. VOTE. VOTE.
VOTE.” This means we still have leverage.
If you visit the wonderful Ganondagan State Historic Site in
Victor, you will discover that the founders of our fledgling nation shamelessly
borrowed from our indigenous neighbors even while attempting to exterminate
them. The result was a version of democracy that set forth principles of
equality and human rights, even if its authors didn’t really mean to suggest
that all people were equally human. White women in the Finger Lakes region later
took as a revelation the discovery that their female indigenous neighbors lived
lives of equality, respect, and power. It is doubtful our foremothers could have
conceived the robust Declaration of
Sentiments without this connection to the Haudenosaunee tribes.
America, at last, seems to have gone sour. Can we muster the
humility to borrow a cup of sugar from the neighbors, again? Something like:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are
created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable
rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now our minds are one.
If we were to share these words at every gathering (instead
of the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem, both of which have been
all but weaponized), maybe we could begin to imagine a national story again. An
American identity. And people who cannot accept this American premise would at
least recede from public life, even if they cannot be persuaded. I hold out
this hope.
Lee is a former staff writer for the Hornell Evening Tribune, has been an occasional columnist for 20 years, is a playwright and author. Lee lives in Arkport
