Too close to home

My Twitter feed has been piled high with stories of aggression against women, minorities, and the LGBT community. I've been reading them and shaking my head, but it just hit close to home. I was telling my husband, who cannot bring himself to read the newspaper*, about the men on Villanova's campus who ran at a black woman and knocked her down while chanting "Trump! Trump! Trump!"**

*my husband who always, always reads the newspaper

**hey, you guys obtaining the expensive Catholic education, you seem to have forgotten. The gang shouting the political leader's name in an attempt to intimidate a brown person -- they're on the wrong side in our particular story.

"You saw what happened to the guys across the street, right?" he asked me. "No," I said, "I haven't looked at Facebook since Tuesday night."

The gay couple across the street posted in our neighborhood Facebook group to ask if anybody else had had strange visitors. Two nights in a row, someone rang their bell after dark -- wearing a mask, carrying a baseball bat. Does it surprise you that the only gay couple on the block received the only visit from the masked bat-wielding guy? No harm done (yet?), so I am assuming this is a cowardly attempt to intimidate. 

But it is a cowardly attempt to intimidate on my block. They live across the street. How many times in my Sane Mom Revolution posts have I bragged about my lovely quiet tree-lined safe friendly block?

Safe and friendly if you're straight, I guess.

I went straight to the kitchen and made a batch of pumpkin bars* for them, and I wrote them a note that says "You are welcome on this block." I am still shaking. Stella is still curious about why I am shaking.

*a poor defense against a baseball bat, I know

What do I tell my daughter? I am not prepared for this.

Comments

[bearing]

I'm so sorry you're being touched by ugliness so close to home.

Leave your porch lights on.

[Sarah]

That's outrageous.

[mary d]

I went to Villanova. I am sick that something like this happened there. I walked through the tunnel they talk about countless times -- my dorm is on the other side of it.

This is worse though. So ugly. While the pumpkin bars may be a poor defense, they are meaningful.

[Linda]

We have had a half dozen talks with our kids about these hate crimes this week: what/why/what to do/etc. They've been the easiest parenting talks I've had so far, because the right thing to do is obvious. It doesn't make it any less heartbreaking though.

[Jennifer]

An Episcopal church in my Diocese was vandalized by Trump supporters. I wrote a letter to my boss, the head of an Episcopal school in the same Diocese saying I hoped the school would speak out clearly against the hate crime and also move toward having bigger conversations about race.

Now Boss wants to hear my thoughts on how we do that. I wish I had answers.

[Jamie]

Update: my neighbors seem really calm about the situation, much calmer than I would have expected. So while I am still outraged, I am less worried about their state of mind.

[Andrea]

You could also offer to watch for the visitors.

[Karen]

I wonder how anyone would know the vandalism to the church was in fact Trump supporters? I'm a Trump voter and do not hate minorities, gays, or women. I am a woman and I have an african-american niece and nephew who I dearly love. This seems like an attempt to demonize Trump supporters. Are there crazy, ill-meaning people who voted for Donald Trump? I'm sure there are, but I can guarantee they do not outnumber the crazy, ill-meaning people who voted for someone else.

[bearing]

It doesn't matter, in my view, whether an act of vandalism was done by Trump supporters or by anti-Trump people or by anyone else. Whoever did it was committing a crime: certainly of property damage, and if an intimidating message was appended, of intimidation.

I hate it when people suggest that an act that turns out to be a "hoax" isn't a real intimidation because the agent turned out to be someone different than you expected.

The point is, it is frightening to be vandalized. A spray painted threat is still threatening whether the agent meant to scare you away or meant to get you riled up and angry. It is an equivalent crime.