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Justin Maike From one of my former political science professors at UM-Dearborn..reposted from his page. I thought it was noteworthy because as has been said countless times..the change begins within. When we embrace hatred, stereotyping, or violence we are no better than the people perpetrating these acts upon us. Consider his experience, as he is targeted and humiliated by BAMN for being a racist, simply for listening to reporters interview Terry Jones. Reverend Jones Visits Dearborn. This is a description of the event. Ford is a major east/west road through Dearborn. Parallel to Ford to the north is an access drive called Altar Road. It has four congregations, Armenian, Orthodox, Islamic and Fundamentalist Baptist. The Reverend Terry Jones of Florida had been to Dearborn three times and announced he was coming back April 7, Holy Saturday to Christians. He was going to stand on the public green between Ford and Altar Roads in front of the Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in the country. He would renounce Islamic religious law (sharia) and condemn the Islamic effort to take over America and destroy the constitution. He feels this is very advanced. The city tried to stop Jones, wrongly in my opinion, but the courts backed him and he appeared. I went at 12:45 for a 1:00 event, and found the area cordoned off by police. On the east end of Altar Road, Artesian Road pulls north off of Ford into the neighborhood. Entrance to Altar Road from Artesian was blocked to traffic by the police. I parked on Artesian and walked to Altar Road. It was about a hundred yards to the mosque. There were maybe 15 demonstrators from BAMN (By Any Means Necessary), an extremist group from Detroit. They were chanting: “Terry Jones, Hell No, Racist Dogs Have to Go.” They have very strong lungs and repeated this chant over and over. There were no Muslim protestors. This is in contrast to what happened a year ago when Jones spoke on the steps of city hall, with demonstrators (and me) on the other side of the street. Then scores of noisy protestors had shouted so loudly that it was hard to hear what Jones was saying. BAMN had been there as well and had stirred up the young Muslim men to cross the heavy traffic on Michigan avenue and charge the police lines on the other side of the street. Immediately riot police appeared with face shields down and truncheons at the ready. They had their assignment: protect Jones. Fortunately, community elders rushed into oncoming traffic and saved those foolish young men from a head smashing. Community leaders had unsuccessfully asked everyone to ignore Jones then. They repeated that request now. This time it worked. I saw the area in front of the mosque where the event was to take place. It was roped off with a few people standing around, including Jones. I was not sure how I was going to get down there. I did not want to watch from 100 yards away. I saw some reporters standing around with cameras and went to stand with them. When they were told to move towards the location, I walked with them. No one stopped me. One of the people walking was a woman about 40. It turned out she was the lawyer for the Thomas More Law Center, which is defending Jones. We were the only two non-reporters. We stood around until the press conference started about 1:15. Jones is very straightforward. He says what he thinks without equivocation. The reporters asked honest questions, not trying to challenge him or catch him up. I admired their professionalism. When the press conference ended, I told Jones I was not a reporter but had a question: Was it significant that this event was during Holy Week? He said it was not. A year ago they had come to Dearborn to support another person who had set the date. When that person dropped out, they came anyway. This was the approximate anniversary of that event. Reverend Sapp, the Jones associate, spoke first, then Reverend Jones. The whole event took about an hour. (I will write a separate summary of their comments). In the area of the mosque, there were about fifteen police cars with a score of officers. Three cars were on the edge of Ford Road to make sure no one stopped. Some were in front of the mosque, others on Altar Road to the east and west of the mosque. Officers were dotted around the area. There were three local men sitting on the front steps of the mosque. They did not move during the event. Around 2:30 the Detroit News reporter and I started walking back to our cars. When we got to Artesian Road, we walked opposite ways around a police car, he to the left, me to the right. I paused for a minute to read the BAMN signs. They started chanting louder and louder, now saying “Racist Dog has to go.” It used to be dogs but now it was singular. When they said “racist” they would look directly at me and shout the word louder. The BAMN leader was a muscular guy well over six feet. The BAMN group started walking towards me, shouting “racist” louder and louder. Suddenly, I found myself completely surrounded by a circle of people chanting “racist.” To say I was shaken would be an understatement. Just for the record, I was wearing a burgundy Land’s End sweater, holding in one hand a piece of paper on which I had been taking notes, and in the other a camera. I was also wearing my grey hair. This was not the Jones Entourage uniform. Jones was wearing a black leather jacket with jeans and cowboy boots (and carrying heat, as were some followers. Michigan has an open carry law). Others in his entourage had baseball caps, jeans, and sweatshirts with American flags or strong slogans. I definitely did not look a part of that group. There was only one thing to put me into the “racist” category, which makes “racist” a pretty sweeping category. I had earlier noticed that three or four of the 15 or so BAMN demonstrators were white, but of the crowd that surround me all were Black. Something had happened. I knew I was in some danger, surrounded by a dozen chanting, screaming people with hatred in their faces. They were in a venomous frenzy. I knew not to move or lift my hand or speak. The reporter had told me of an earlier incident when BAMN had attacked two Jones supporters, shoved and hit them, and knocked them to the ground. The police had to rescue them. I knew that if I tried to run, there would be some kind of frenzy and I would be attacked. Fortunately, two Dearborn officers stepped into the circle. One (who was Black) said in a very gentle manner, come, walk away. I started walking to my car, which was fifty feet down the road. The chanting mob followed me. The look of hatred and dehumanization on their faces was chilling. I had ceased to be a person and had become some monster or demon. The police walked along with the crowd. I was very happy to see those fifteen police cars nearby, and the scores of officers in the area. (These were separate from the 15 cars and officers near the mosque). Those police were very professional in a difficult situation. I admired them. Throughout all my life I have never had a situation where I felt in danger for racial or ethnic or other such reasons. Maybe I live in a bubble, but I have walked in East Jerusalem during the Palestinian uprising, in Nairobi’s Mathare Valley where kids grow up in boxes, in Soweto during apartheid, and in Amman just after the Gulf War. There was always a human dimension that cut across the tensions. Today, I saw something ugly. I had a sense of what it was to be targeted by an ethnic mob. I knew that if it were not for those police, I would probably be beaten unconscious. BAMN showed a level of hatred and dehumanization that I had never seen before. I sensed what it was like to be a Tutsi in Rwanda, a Muslim in Bosnia, a Palestinian delivery boy in West Jerusalem when a bomb goes off, a Sikh in Delhi after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, a Jew in 1880 having a German mob shouting Hep Hep, or Treyvon Martin. I was afraid. Like · · Unfollow Post · 2 hours ago near Dearborn Shannon Rae McEvilly Wow. This is some of the most tone-deaf, blatantly racist gibberish I've read in a long time. Some "angry Blacks" yelled at this guy once and he knows what it's like to be a Tutsi in Rwanda or a Jew in the Holocaust? I have a hard time believing this guy is serious. 2 hours ago · Unlike · 1 Justin Maike What? You're missing the point...he was there to observe, photograph (not to support Jones) and was surrounded by BAMN shouting at him for being a racist, when in fact he is one of the last people in the world I would apply that title to. ... See More 2 hours ago · Like Justin Maike And where did you get Jew In the holocaust? That was never said. "Palestinian delivery boy in west jerusalem" actually. 2 hours ago · Like Shannon Rae McEvilly As he's someone so willing to use such stereotypically racist and dehumanizing language to refer to this group of Black protestors, while assuming they were about to beat him based on nothing, makes me think that BAMN got that characterization right. I'm not in BAMN, & I've in the past had major issues with some of their tactics. If this guy has a point, though, it's completely overshadowed by his absurd rhetoric. 2 hours ago · Like Shannon Rae McEvilly I'm sorry, a Jew during a pogrom in Germany. Is that somehow more sensible? 2 hours ago · Like Carey L Sperl Thank you Shannon, for pointing that out "I had earlier noticed that three or four of the 15 or so BAMN demonstrators were white, but of the crowd that surround me all were Black. Something had happened. " mself to things 2 hours ago · Like Carey L Sperl What else I was going to say, is him likening him to some of the oppressed and outwardly accosted people in history and throughout the world does NOT cross over well. 2 hours ago · Like Justin Maike And what is wrong that he observed that was the group that surrounded him was black? It's an observation. Should we act like we're all the same color? And I believe the word was "sensed what it was like"...to be stereotyped to be something you are not simply for being in a certain place at a certain time. 2 hours ago · Like Carey L Sperl Why does COLOR ever need to be introduced? It reminds me of when I talk with people and they HAVE to point out that they have a black friend or an asian friend or a muslim friend... I don't care about what color or anything anyone is. He can voice his issue with BAMN but needs to learn to remove race from his recounting of this event because he reads exactly as what BAMN accused him of. 2 hours ago · Like Thomas Mahler "but I have walked in [...] Soweto during apartheid" Being white during apartheid is nothing. Let's see him go back now. Or when it was just ending. 2 hours ago · Like Carey L Sperl And yes, if we are to see people as equals, we should see each other as the same color... MLK preached that... maybe we should actually LIVE that 2 hours ago · Like Shannon Rae McEvilly It's far more than an innocent observation because he made a point to identify them as all Black, even noting that there were White protestors previously but not in this group, then proceeded to characterize them as violent thugs bent on his destruction, using blatantly dehumanizing language. 2 hours ago · Like Shannon Rae McEvilly Tristan Armond Taylor, Nicole Conaway, I hope y'all are drafting an apology to this man as we speak. about an hour ago · Unlike · 1 Charles Brown What? You're missing the point...he was there to observe, photograph (not to support Jones) and was surrounded by BAMN shouting at him for being a racist, when in fact he is one of the last people in the world I would apply that title to. T... See More about an hour ago · Like Thomas Mahler Real racism is being told from a young age that you will have to work 3 times as hard as your white counterparts to be successful, or risk dieing in a gutter. about an hour ago · Like Charles Brown That's sounds like telling the truth about the white supremacist system. For u to call that "racist" is white supremacist on your part. about an hour ago · Like Justin Maike I'm pretty sure no one here is a racist so let's cool it. 52 minutes ago · Like Thomas Mahler My point is that parents tell that to their children, because it's pretty true. Not that it's racist for parents to tell their children about the society they live in. 50 minutes ago · Like Charles Brown It's not individuals _are_ racists. It is that they take white supremacist positions on issues. Even people "here" take white supremacist positions on issues. To say what BAMN was doing is racist, is itself a white supremacist position. The main form of white supremacy today is calling anti-white supremacist activist statements "racist" . It the stock in trade of Reaganite white supremacy. 48 minutes ago · Like Charles Brown oh 46 minutes ago · Like Justin Maike Explain how it is a white supremacist position to say that stereotyping can happen to anyone. 31 minutes ago · Like Charles Brown If u are saying that somebody fighting white supremacy is using a stereotype just like some one using a racist stereotype, then u are taking a white supremacist position on that anti-white supremacist. That's the abstract version that occurs to me. Be more specific about the stereotyping . 29 minutes ago · Like Justin Maike no, I'm not saying intrinsically what BAMN does is stereotype people. But in this case, surrounding a white man at an event, whom they assumed him to be with the overtly racist Pastor Terry Jones simply because he was in the general area, then to surround him shouting and calling him a racist. Yes, that is stereotyping someone. Could've been fifteen latinos and one asian; or fifteen white people and one black person, or anyone. I would have reacted the same way. But I'm done with this thread the point has been way overshot and I will respectfully agree to disagree in our assessments. 21 minutes ago · Like Charles Brown Assume BAMN was racially stereotyping, racially stereotyping white people is not the problem that racially stereotyping Black and colored peoples is. It is a white supremacist system. So, false stereo-typing of white people merely results in the state and other dominant forces and powers, police, law, judges, business decisions, money decisions favor those being stereotyped as white, falsely or not. To be stereotyped white is an advantage in a white supremacist system. That's part of the supremacy of white people in a white supremacist system , society, economy and polity. City and state, cocunty, chamber of commerce, coalition of manufactures. The ruling class. BAMN chastisement is about a trillionith of what ruling class brings down in favor of those stereotyped white. about a minute ago · Like _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
