Many of you remember Bernie Goetz and his season is coming up. In fact, the anniversary date of his ascent to fame is shortly coming up, December 22nd. For those of you who never heard of Bernie he was the Subway Vigilante who shot and injured four teen age thugs on a subway train in self defense. This was big and happy news in crime weary New York, and some members of my family declared a holiday in recognition of his feat.
The holiday had previously been established by the United States and was to have been officially celebrated a few weeks after the incident albeit for a different purpose. The local school board, in grudging compliance with the new vacation day, sent us a letter informing us that to their chagrin, there would be no bus service on January 15 since it was now a holiday. The sense of the communication was that (although the school board regularly cancelled bus service at the drop of a snowflake, especially when the public schools were not in session) they regretted the need to comply with government directives that required them to close the schools and cancel bus service on that day and we would have to find other means of getting our children to their private schools. I posted the letter on our refrigerator door and within a short time after posting, the name of the holiday had been crossed out and in its place the words "Bernie Goetz Hero Day" had been penciled in.
That was 24 years ago. Today, I am taking the liberty of proposing another name change for the holiday, " Stephen Millies Shoe Day." Much as the Iraqi public has come out onto the streets of Bagdad to make common cause with the reporter who threw his shoes at president Bush, I propose that we honor this american hero of the common man who had the courage to stand up to the gangsters liars and thugs who run the MTA and are bleeding the region dry in pursuit of their own enrichment.
Obviously, the incident in Iraq has already caused a change to our culture to include shoes and feet as weapons of mass contempt.
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4 comments:
That anyone would choose to rename a day dedicated to the honor of a man who fought so hard for basic human dignity for people who should have had it from the start is very sad.
I'm hopeful that because my kids have school that day they will learn about what the man achieved, for his people and this nation, whatever his personal failings.
Dear FBB, no one is contesting that the dark history of our race relations should be explored. However, you must be too young to remember those similarly dark times of 24 years ago, when law abiding citizens were held int he grip of fear on our streets and subways, and the feeling int he country, not to mention the fact that the mail to Congress was running, I think, something like 3-1 against the establishment of a holiday for this particular individual.
It was just one man's ( boy's?) way of standing up to the establishment, maaaaan
So relax. I think it should be in honor of someone else close to you who shares that same day.
You are deluding yourself if you think that minimizing it by "renaming it" starting with its inception, is anything other than racist.
That New York City was held in the 'grip of fear" is no reason to name the day (spitefully) for a kook who not only shot them, but looked at one and said "you don't look so bad" and shot him again.
I have no real problem with Bernie, but equating him or Stephen Millies with MLK is minimizing the latter. It basically says "this guy did good stuff too, I'll name this day after him." No person who is truly honest when looking at this can think for one minute that this is the right thing to do.
I don't know about 3-1 opposition, but the government was reticent because of the expense, and because a private citizen had never before been honored this way. That certain states did not readily adopt the holiday speaks more to our very recent racist past than to any sort of proof that this man did not deserve national recognition for his efforts in bringing BASIC civil rights an equality to black people.
fbb
Are you angling for a job in the Obama administration?
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