Have you ever seen someone being publicly harassed by haters?
I hadn’t...before this week. Looks like I’ll have to get better prepared for dealing with it.
Thursday night after work I stopped to get gas at a busy intersection. Earlier in the day I had listened to an elderly Jewish woman whose family escaped the Holocaust when she was 6 years old tell me her fears about the election results, about how history seemed to be repeating itself. I had just finished a diary recalling Mom’s wisdom: “This, too, shall pass.” I pulled around to the open pump in front of a jacked-up big-wheel pick-up truck. As I swiped my debit card I heard yelling and saw a tall, skinny, hyped-up shaved-headed tattooed chain-bedecked shirtless young guy swaggering back to his truck where awaited another skinhead in the passenger seat. Oh, great. I turned away and started pumping gas, but the yelling intensified and had definitely taken on a threatening tone. I turned and looked again, and saw the tall skinhead now hurling invectives at a young brown man gassing up his beater Toyota across the way.
I moved to the back of my car, crossed my arms, and made eye contact with the young brown man, not sure what else to do but bear witness. I wanted to walk up to the two young tattooed chain-covered punks and scold them, but they seemed too out-of-control with rage and something else— Drugs? Alcohol? so I kept my distance but kept watching them, feeling helpless and somewhat cowardly. I didn’t want to get hurt. I am not a hero or a warrior. I didn’t want to escalate the situation.
The young brown man stood there impassively, watching the two thugs. I couldn’t make out the words they were screaming over their truck’s engine, but their intent was clear. The tall skinhead jumped back in his truck and gunned it, still yelling, and then spotted me, a 60 year-old professionally dressed white lady giving him the stink-eye. His truck suddenly lurched towards me and I thought, Well, there goes my car, as it looked like he was going to ram the back of it. As he narrowly swerved around my car he bellowed out the window at me:
“RAPE AND MURDER, BITCH! We’re free now, we can do anything we want! We’re free!”
Look — I know these people have always been among us. I live in a rural northern California town and am under no illusions about some of my Jefferson State loving neighbors. But when you see them in a nearby blue college town, newly emboldened by the election of President Pepe it makes you literally feel sick inside. “We’re free now!” I turned as he peeled out, trying to memorize his license plate, but they were already gone, their whoops and shrieks fading as their truck careered down the street.
I turned and looked back at the young brown man, holding my palms up in a wordless what the fuck? He shook his head, still stoically expressionless.
I walked across to him. “I apologize,” I said. It was all I could get out.
He shrugged. “Nothing surprises me right now.” He was dressed in what looked like work clothes— faded t-shirt and jeans, heavy boots, a baseball cap with an indistinct logo. He looked to be about 20, wore the faint shadow of a goatee and spoke without any accent. He might have been part Hispanic or from some other combination of genetic heritages. There was nothing out of the ordinary about him.
“What were they saying to you? All I could hear was the hate.”
“Do you think I was going to get into it with them?” he asked, and shook his head. “Just a bunch of pro-Trump stuff.” He looked away, then back. “Nothing surprises me now after the past couple of weeks. They were on drugs.”
Tweakers. Of course. I repeated how sorry I was he had to deal with them.
He nodded towards his car, which was jammed with tools and construction supplies. “I’ve been listening to conservative radio today, trying to understand their logic.”
“There’s isn’t any logic to be found there,” I said, but he replied quietly and firmly, “No, they have logic. Logic is all they have. What they don’t have is perspective. Their logic is like two railroad tracks leading in one direction.”
We kept talking. He asked me if I’d seen that youtube video that had gone viral, the one where kids rounded up Mexican kids on the playground “for deportation” ? I said no, but I’d just read about a white couple who had adopted two black kids, and one kid came home and asked his parents if it was true that he was going to be put in chains and sent back to slavery?
We stared at each other for a moment, unshed tears in both our eyes.
He said, “I can understand people voting for conservatives,” and I could see how hard he was working to be a fair person who doesn’t generalize, a good person. I said, “I remember years ago when conservatives were just people with different but reasonable beliefs I disagreed with. But that today was just pure hate." He agreed.
I told him how embarrassed I was for my country right now, and for how some of its people were behaving, and he said, “This won’t last. Things will get better.”
This, too, shall pass.
I wish I could believe that. I fear it’s going to get much worse before then.
I drove home fighting back tears, wishing I had known better what to do. I have a cell phone but it’s rarely on. In the future I’m going to have it on when I’m out in public so I can video this sort of thing, or at least snap a quick picture of someone’s license plate. I felt helpless, enraged, and deeply afraid. I thought about a scene early on in Fear the Walking Dead, where a character remarked on how very quickly and completely civilization can come unraveled.
Most of all I wondered if I did enough, and what I could have done differently. I asked various kossack friends for their input. One shared the info-graphic above, and you can see the rest f it and read more at A Bystander’s Guide to Standing up Against Islamophobic Harassment (and Other Types of Harassment, Too). I now realize what I could have done differently. I could have immediately walked over to the young brown man and started talking with him, pointedly ignoring the haters. Yes, that would have been better.
1.) Engage conversation [with the person experiencing harassment, not their attacker]. Go to them, sit beside them and say hello. Try to appear calm, collected and welcoming. IGNORE THE ATTACKER.
2.) Pick a random subject and start discussing it. It can be anything: a movie you liked, the weather, saying you like something they wear and asking where they got it…
3.) Keep building the safe space. Keep eye contact with them and don’t acknowledge the attacker’s presence: the absence of response from you two will push them to leave the area shortly.
4.) Continue the conversation until the attacker leaves and escort them to a safe place if necessary. Bring them to a neutral area where they can recollect themselves; respect their wishes if they tell you they’re ok and just want to go.
Another kossack shared a link from the Southern Poverty Law Center where hate incidents can be reported.
We all have to stand up to this bullying however we can. We must not look away. Because I am clear on one thing: Hate, and hate alone, elected this man. I’m done with the analysis, the finger-pointing, and the arguments about who or what cost us this election and created this catastrophe. The only blame goes to HATE, and the people who buy into it and carry it in their hearts and act upon it.