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Hey Ithaca Students - Just Stop

I'm white, I'm vocal, I demand equality and justice. I also know when is the right time, when is the wrong time and when my voice should just shut the fuck up.

Dear Ithaca and Cornell students,

We know that you're out on your own for the very first time and you want to make a difference, but shutting down Aurora Street with permission from vendors (who profit from passerby traffic) and from IPD, isn't a protest. You playing Kumbaya does nothing to honor Freddie Gray, nor does it speak to the injustice of racism. It's also not cool to not at least show compassion and respect to Brian Moore, who died (today) doing his job of protecting and serving. While you think you're demonstrating for a cause, you're causing more of a problem and you're epitomizing racially inequality. Those people in Baltimore are standing in slums they call home, while you're sitting peacefully and safely on a street in the greenest city and best college town in America. The closest thing you've come to a malatov cocktail being thrown near you, is the hot pocket you overcooked while drunk. So stop.

I'm not saying you shouldn't champion the downtrodden and the oppressed, but do it intelligently. Gather a busload of people and go to Baltimore and use your parent's resources you despise so much. Put a business back together or offer to come back in the summer and tutor children. I don't know, do something other than putting on your khakis and sundresses and sitting on a well lit street without any chance of anything worse than someone forgetting to bring their guitar or book of hood poetry. I realize you think you matter and your voice is being heard, but that journalist from the Ithaca Journal hates interviewing you more than you love placing that flower in your hair. This is not the 60's, the 80's or even the early 2000's. It's 2015 and we have twitter buzzing a million hits a minute and voices are heard in retweets and stars, not in a handful of kids paying $200K for a college education to sing songs.

My grandmother had a nurse who made $11 an hour. This woman did more for others, before noon, than you've done in your lives and she too was going to school. She lived in a trailer, as did two of the three other nurses who helped. Some lived in them their entire lives. You know who you could help and make a huge difference in your community for? Them. Ithaca has a huge drug problem and it's not a secret. Do you care or are you worried that fighting that issue hits too close to home? You'll fight fracking, but you're not the ones getting arrested. That would be seniors and parents, worried about their children's future, your future. Who are you fighting for exactly? Who are you against? If you can't answer this with anything other than a headline or a cliche, you're fighting the wrong fight.

I know what you're saying, strength in numbers, but the reality is, if you combined both schools and every student marched, it might just match what happened in Baltimore. 100% participation and maybe you come close to what they did out of passion, fear and love. Are you willing to die for this belief? If the cops sent a warning that anyone playing guitar and reciting poems in the middle of the street would be maced, beaten and possibly shot, would you have been there in your best Friday night clothes, blankets and cappuccino in tow?

You are not the voice of the next generation. You are quite possibly the last of an entitled group. Remember that, because in 20 years, when kids aren't as lucky as you, because they can't afford to pay a quarter of a million dollars to go away to school, you'll be their employers and as yourself this, "Will you give them the night off to fight the man or will you have become that which you feel has oppressed?

Sincerely,

One Voice

Comments

  1. I've noticed that white people who post "black lives matter" stuff all the time will then ignore, do not comment on, post and/or "like" anything in memory of the fallen cops. I'm calling bs on them. That McCandless kid comes to mind. Or whatever his name was. How dare mommy and daddy buy me a new car for my college graduation! Now I'm going out into the wild, where I will kill a moose for no reason and accidentally poison myself.

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  2. Posted twice by accident, so I deleted one. One of these people told me they wouldn't go to a certain play because they had no interest in seeing a play about privileged white boys talking about life. Sometimes, it's just a play.

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  3. Please don't get me started on the Into the Wild. It's one of the few movies to ever get me angry where I was shouting. His screams for "mommy" at the end, epitomize white privilege. I don't post a blue line for ever cop, because I think to memorialize every cop who dies in the line of duty can and will eventually numb us the their deaths, just like we are to poor black kids. One thing that bothers me about Ithaca is that despite the people being very similar in appearance to Eastchester demographically, it's the reverse exaggeration. It's funny, I have "there are no bad cops" and "all black kids are thugs" on Facebook, but in Ithaca, where I know almost nobody well, it's all cops are bad and these kids are misunderstood. There's no middle ground for any of these people and they both come off looking like idiots. I've stopped arguing, because people use terminology to get me going, but what they don't understand is that it was their first thought. Ask them if they are biased, they say no, but ask them to say one word to describe Baltimore and it's thug. Ask a Cornell student and he'll ask you to wait til his barista finishes his order, then he'll delve into the complexity of the situation and how he relates.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I agree. This person I am thinking of is an intelligent, decent person but on this subject she is very one sided. Meanwhile, she was sent "away" to college - paid for by her dad - and is now in an NYU certificate program, also paid for by her dad, even though she is in her 30's - but yet she will not go see a random play, that has nothing to do with race, just because it happens to feature three white boys but yet attends every single rally/protest against cops or racism - which is fine, but then, she will not seem to feel any sympathy for a cop or family of a cop who was killed. I don't understand why she can't be objective and perhaps feel some sort of empathy or understanding in both situations. I don't argue with her or people like her because I realize it is a lost cause. Funny this person I speak of is also a coffee aficionado who probably sees a barista every day. They've made up their mind and won't see anything differently unless it affects them directly. BTW, I hated Into the Wild (the book), I always tell people to read Into Thin Air instead, equally stupid people trying to climb Everest even though they were not qualified to do so, without massive amounts of support and help from sherpas who literally sometimes carried them up the mountain (rich people), but at least it was a good story.

    ReplyDelete

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