Higher Learning, the Hard Way

Perhaps I should attune myself to the happenings on campus and not act so dead to it, for York University seems to be a hotbed of hatred. Behold:

12/3: Three students beaten and robbed in separate but related incidents

1/11: Female attacked in Founders College, marking the fifth sexual assault on campus this school year

1/13: Student Centre employee assaulted with a weapon

1/22: Racist graffiti found on door of Black Students Association office

Talk of the merits of closed-circuit televison and increased presence of law enforcement seems to be the customary response - I'd go so far as to say perfunctory. Have these proven to be deterrents of criminal behaviour? I don't know if a controlled study is possible to arrive at a desired scientific answer: the powers-that-be will say "yes", but, at least from what I've noticed, history will say "no".

The story of the sexual assault in Founders College provided yet another tragic reminder of Man's need to dominate Woman. If you're of the male sex, you might be thinking, "I'm a man, and I wouldn't dare rape any woman!" That may be so, my friend, but ask yourself how many times you've denigrated a woman - any woman, whether on television or in plain view - either out of personal belief or to reinforce your "manliness" before your macho male friends. What does this have to do with a series of sexual assaults at York University, or rape in general? Everything. No security camera or armed officer of the law is going to change our collective attitude about our female counterparts. In the wake of the Vanier assaults in September, I wanted to ask the armed guard who sat outside the residence if s/he would be effective in apprehending the rapists who dwell within (my cowardice prevented me from doing so).

Again, it can be said that no security camera or armed officer of the law will succeed in altering one's bigoted perspective, or need to beat another into a pulp and rob her/him. I'm reminded of a chat I had with a self-professed Socialist who desired to create a world in which one feared committing racist acts, and if he had to take a baseball bat to a few skulls, so be it. I proceeded to ask if this form of action would rid our society of racism, or simply punish racists, thus leading me to the point I'm reiterating for the umpteenth time: it seems we're more interested in apprehending criminals than in ending crime. Forgive me for the repetition, but I cannot stress this enough.

Having said all this, do I have the solution to the problem connecting these incidents? Hardly: I'm still trying to make sense of it all. Am I wasting my time in doing this? Do we need swift action to protect ourselves? From whom are we protecting ourselves? Some bogeymen with an insatiable desire to disrupt our peaceful, law-abiding society? The way I see it, these laws and cameras and cops intended to serve as some sort of security blanket, these layers of "protection" we install to protect us from ourselves. We don't want to believe we can just as easily be thieves or rapists or racists or murderers. We demand swift action to protect us from these "miscreants", yet beg for mercy when we find ourselves under said moniker.

God made us all, even the purveyors of "evil". Sheltering ourselves from the truth may succeed in punishing evil-doers, but will do nothing to rid the world of said evil: for every one person we incarcerate, several are lining up to take his/her place.

The Better Life

This Thursday past, in the neighbourhood I used to live up until early last year, outside the grocery store where I used to shop, a forty-seven-year-old father of two lost his life as he was caught in the crossfire of what is believed to be a shootout between rival gang members. This came on the heels of a forty-two-year-old man losing his life after two men fired upon a crowd of people after being ejected from a downtown strip club.

I saw the photograph of the gentleman killed outside the grocery store and wondered if, perchance, I had seen him during the numerous times I shopped there and walked past. Here was a man, a father, traveling thousands of miles over water and land to the "land of opportunity", as we know it, to provide a better life for his eighteen-year-old daughter and twenty-three-year-old son, only to have his snuffed out by someone presumably trying to do the same for himself. While I was living in the neighbourhood, the gentleman who ran the little convenience shop around the corner from us, another Chinese immigrant, was slashed in his face late one night. Fortunately, he was able to recover - he returned to his post the next day, as a matter of fact - but it makes one wonder: here is a man with a Ph. D. in Chemistry coming to Canada in hopes of a better life, only to work round-the-clock in perpetual mortal danger in the underbelly of Toronto.

As for the other gentleman, countless times have I treaded over the spot of cold, hard concrete on which he died; not one of those times did I wonder if some unruly customer brandishing a pistol would be thrown out of the club into my path, but here we are. This man was also a father; now, his life is no more, for a couple of young men thought to right a perceived wrong through lethal means.

I can't say I'm at all surprised at the outrage expressed by members of the public in the wake of these shootings. It's easy to lash out at these perpetrators and demand their heads on a row of pikes. Here is one such reaction:

""When people start pulling this stuff in broad daylight without any regard for citizens because they don't care, because they know they're going to get a slap on the wrist...that's the problem".

An interesting choice of words, to say the least, though who am I to comment, having not lost a loved one in such a senseless manner? How can I say my reaction would not be vitriolic? Nonetheless, I must say this: it may come as a shock to many of you, but murderers are often branded as "heroes". Had this been a battlefield in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Haïti, or Sudan, or Somalia, or Colombia, or any other territory whose resources we seek to conquer, the assailants would be commended for their bravery and patriotism, while the likes of Messrs. Hou Chang Mao and John O'Keefe graced with the moniker "collateral damage".

Yes, these events have everything to do with the wars in which we engage. I don't bring this up for the sake of climbing atop my Lefty soap box: I do it because the theme underlying murder at home and warfare abroad is the belief that violence will solve our problems, right our wrongs. When Presidents and Prime Ministers decry the need to murder people before they murder us, we nod our heads in agreement, and who can blame us? We don't want that shit pipe to backwash into our backyard. But when it does, we fail to see it for what it is: the same length of pipe connecting the shit over there to the shit here.

The taking of lives, no matter by whose hand, no matter by whose order, still reeks of the same decay. If we want this to stop, we best ask ourselves the right questions before attempting to answer them.

The End of the Line

I live at the end of the subway line. Frequently, I ride home in the late evening. By rights, it's a fairly tame trip home - most people who live around here have their automobiles carry them to and fro, thus negating, in their minds, the need for the train, leaving those unable or unwilling to dole out the money for such a luxury (purchase, insurance, maintenance, fuel) to exercise the public transit option.

On a lonely Tuesday night ride home, I nod off just as the train pulls away from the downtown core and its hip, trendy locales, towards the more drab confines of suburbia. As my eyelids drop, I see a train full of people from all walks of life; by the time they open, the train approaches its final destination, and few of us remain, sparsely scattered throughout the cars, mostly men, mostly non-White. Despite the lack of glamour offered by this form of intra-city travel, there is a beauty in this sombre setting. I look at these few faces and wonder what they might be pondering at that moment, or how they ended up sitting in this car, in the seat opposite me, riding to the end of the line.

This past Sunday evening, as I ascended from the tunnel to the bus terminal, I came across a drunken White man surrounded by eight or so White police officers, all ready to pounce on him at a moment's notice. I suppose his loud, unruly behaviour frightened some customers and warranted a telephone call to the nearest precinct. We bystanders stood and watched, not knowing what to think, not knowing what would happen next: would these eight grown men with truncheons and guns stomp the life out of this surly old man? would cooler heads prevail? Fortunately, the latter was the case, though who knows what happened after he was escorted away in the cruiser. I could not help but wonder: what if this gentleman's skin was coloured differently? would calm and reason rule the evening?

As I write this, I think to myself why I spend so much time at the bars or other social gatherings expecting things to happen and being disappointed when they don't, when the most fascinating portion of the evening is spent traveling there and back, sitting among the people who can't, or don't, throw money at the luxury of a private chariot to carry them around the city, people in deep thought (even as they read those free watered-down mini-newspapers), people on the go, people leading lives, with stories to tell. I've probably interacted with more people on a bus or train than at any bar, night club, house party or other social gathering: I imagine the same can be said for many of you.

It's amazing how expectations cloud our minds: we hit the town on a given Friday or Saturday night expecting to meet that new friend or special someone, expecting to get laid, expecting to have a blast, then end up disappointed after said expectations are not meant, all the while taking for granted the people we see on the ride there, absent from our mind's eye for the sole reason that we do not know them, that they are "others", people not part of our "scene". Mind you, this isn't to say I'm vowing to approach strangers I see on each of my commutes - I'm too riddled with anxiety to embark on such an endeavour: all I'm saying is, there is beauty where you least expect to find it.

The blood spills. The wagons circle. A child is lost forever.

On the first day of 2008, a fourteen-year-old girl, Stefanie Rengel, was slain in my neighbourhood. A seventeen-year-old boy and fifteen-year-old girl, whose identities are protected under our Youth Criminal Justice Act, are now in custody. For some, the sorrow has morphed into outrage, with calls the accused be tried as adults. I try to imagine my reaction had this been my daughter. Would I demand vengeance? Would I feel closure seeing these children shuffled off to the prison? All I know is, the deed has been done, and my child is gone forever.

At the end of the linked article, you will find comments left by friends and family on the girl's Facebook page, the last of which reads as follows:

"this world disappoints me."

Me, too, I'm afraid. It disappoints me to see children killing each other. It disappoints me to see the media salivate over these atrocities, eager for yet another martyr. It disappoints me to see virtually no one spot the similarity between this and what happens on any given battlefield. It disappoints me to live in a world in which settling disputes or accumulating worldly desires by brute force is standard practice.

When kids kill other kids on the front lines, we call them "heroes". When they do it in the schoolyard, we call them "delinquent".

I hope, one day, Stefanie Rengel will be left alone by the crusaders, allowed to rest in peace.

I wish I hadn't had to write this; alas, here we are again.