An Open Letter to Ms. Joan Baez: from one Baby Boomer to Another

Joan Baez in her lifetime has always upheld a principled stand towards non-violence and social injustice.

I met Joan Baez in the seventies at an anti-Vietnam War demonstration.  I touched her hand for a second, thinking that I had just had contact with a saint.

Can we be selective about justice?

Dear Ms. Baez,

Coming out of the Westlake Transit Center (in Seattle) onto Pike St. between and 3rd and 4th Avenues, I walked towards down Pike towards my bus-stop on 3rd Avenue.

I noticed a group of perhaps 6-8 African-Americans occupying a big part of the sidewalk.  They were behaving in a disorderly fashion, screaming, shouting, engaged in some kind of group behavior not immediately classifiable. 

What was clear is that on a crowded sidewalk, people were having difficulty walking down the sidewalk:  either you walked towards the group and had to stop and then try to walk through or around them, or else, like I chose to do, you had to walk almost to the edges of the sidewalk

I tried to walk quickly to the extreme edge of the sidewalk to get around, as did a few others, including one African-American woman.  I don't know who brushed whom, but she emitted a very eerie, sustained scream as she passed me.  I turned back to look at her (and the bottleneck of people on the sidewalk), which is maybe what I should not have done.

My experience living in the United States as a racial minority myself--but not an African-American--is that accidentally stepping in front of an African-American or bumping them will sometimes lead to one being screamed at, and sometimes, even pushed or hit.

Have you,. Ms. Baez, a Latina, been aware of the violence in this country captured, for example, in the following?

Incidents like the ones above happen all the time in the United States, far more frequently than people like to admit. (And far more often than killings of young black men by the police).

In my worse fears, I will get slapped, shoved, or hit on the head.  (Or even sucked punched, if I put up mild resistance).

Under such conditions, I want to avoid "a scene" at all costs (having strangers ask me what happened, if I have been hurt, or having to call 911, the police, which will in all likelihood, be futile and a waste of time.

Incidents such as those that occur from day to day in downtown Seattle, at places like the vicinity of Westlake Plaza happen all the time and, unless there is a homicide or murder, rarely get reported.

I feel invisible in this city.  My opinions and experiences will never be reported in any media.  

They are not important.  No one will believe them.   Or they are, they will be discounted (as in "you must have provoked, it was your fault, you need to learn how to...").
This is the danger of mass thinking.

One extreme historical example of social denial is that of Germans in Nazi Germany may have noticed that Jews were missing or were being rounded up but could not speak up because of social and political pressures--being shunned or criticized for expressing unpopular opinions that did not conform to the conventional thinking of the time.

Incidents such as Ferguson, MO are complex and only with violence reducible to the simplistic, black-and-white picture/explanation(s) that automatically get generated in liberal and/or mainstream circles.

Does anyone remember the Duke Lacrosse "rape" incident?  

If even such a revered icon as Joan Baez can fool herself into thinking that Ferguson, MO was simply a repeat of what happened in the Deep South in the early 60's, then, I suppose, anyone can make misguided but well-intentioned mistakes.

You would embarrass Ms. Baez, whom I respect enormously, if you asked what should have the response of the white community after four Lakewood police officers were shot in cold blood by a black man, or when James Paroline was "sucker punched," while tending a traffic circle garden in South Seattle--with such force that the decorated Vietnam War veteran fell crashing to the ground, hitting his head and dying as a result.

And presumably Ms. Baez in the course of her life has rarely, if at all, been yelled at, tripped, or slapped in the face by a raging stranger "who happened to be African-American."

Nor apparently did the murder of Dien Hyunh, a Vietnamese Buddhist man, who was bludgeoned on the head to death with a hammer by an honors African-American high school student in Tacoma, WA several years ago seem to attract her attention or spark compassion.  (There were no mass protests at the time, either).

There might be other reasons for the kind of behavior I witnessed that day besides racism and/or the history of slavery in this country, namely, bad family parenting, the unwillingness to assume personal responsibility, liberal white guilt, and self-victimhood ("whatever they do that is destructive is a result of their being mistreated by others").

What is the message that the young people of today, especially in communities such as Seattle, are being taught--even if subliminally-- by the example of Ms. Baez (and others):  that they should be outraged by the killing of a black man in Ferguson, MI but not by the murders of four white cops in Seattle, WA? That the latter "doesn't count"--for outrage--since the victims were white (and the killer black)?

Resist conformism of any kind especially if it flies in the face of individual conscience.

Truth and the freedom of each individual to discover it for him or herself are antithetical with fear.  This is what Joan Baez has been advocating for most of her life.

If there was a disproportionate amount of violent crime being committed by members of the Scandinavian-American community in Seattle, I would expect the community to take measures to raise awareness within and curb it.

Are we living in a time of mass psychosis,
i.e., the agreed upon lie,
to pretend not to see what we really see,
to pretend not to feel what we really feel?

Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.

Lillian Hellman