open letter

[rm]

“I agree with the Bush administration that we take the fight to them,” she said. “We never again let them come onto our soil and try to destroy not only our democracy but communities like the community of New York. Never again. So, yes, I do agree with taking the fight to the terrorists and stopping them over there.”

Dear Sarah Palin:

I have news for you. New York is not a community. It is a city with over 7 million residents with a significantly higher number of people within its limits at any given time for both work and tourism. And so New York is actually made up of hundreds of communities. Thousands.

Let me tell you something about the communities of my city: You hate most of them. For we are immigrants and artists and people who don't necessarily live, love or worship like you do. We are the strangers you fear and vilify even though we're like you in almost every way that should actually matter. We want our families to be safe, our children to be well-educated, our jobs to be secure, and our futures to be full of potential. We want nice things and lower taxes and dignity and the freedom to pursue our hobbies and our passions and our devotions.

All of which means some pretty simple stuff:

We don't have a lot of patience for you. Most of us have learned more about the world greeting our neighbors on the stairs and in our corner stores than you've learned in your entire tenure as the governor of Alaska. Within a mile of each of our homes is almost invariably a mosque and a synagogue and a dozen different denominations of Christian church. And within our city are some of the best universities and research facilities in the world.

So when you talk about keeping my community safe when you don't even know its structure or its scale, I am aghast.

When you vilify the very things which make the motor of my city run and it shine as a beacon of hope to those who have always been told that different is wrong or that hope is not possible, you betray not just your ignorance of New York and of America and of the world, but you betray us -- real people who were wounded first by 9/11, yes, but who are now bone weary with the exhaustion at being exploited for political goals we cannot support or trust or even believe weren't explicitly created to destroy the very communities you gleefully refuse to understand, recognize or even see.

So stop using my city and stop thinking aggression makes you brave. It's a child's mistake, and it cheapens us all. I refuse to be a symbol of your dreamed upon wars. Or a target of them.

Comments

[cerisier.livejournal.com]

While your point about population is correct, Palin's problem with the distinction between city and community can't be blamed on Alaska's numbers. Anchorage especially may be small but is itself a city made up of many diverse communities: there are thriving ethnic and religious communities from all over the globe, especially (but not limited to) Cambodia, Thailand Laos, Samoa, Tonga, Korea, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and many other Asian and Pacific Island countries -- and there are the many different and varied Alaska Native communities. Yes, there are hunters and fishers and snow machiners and churchgoers of every kind, and there are also writers and artists and activists and Buddhist monks, and most importantly, none of these groups are mutually exclusive. Sure, it's not NYC -- nothing else is, from what I understand! ;) -- but it's nothing to be ashamed of, and it's even more damning that Sarah Palin can't make this distinction when she's lived 45 minutes away from a pretty damn fine city her whole life.

(And that's why a lot of us won't be voting for her.)

[kayshapero]

Hmm.. sounds a bit like a miniature version of Los Angeles (where I am). No excuse for insularity, then.

Mind you I was not thinking of it as a place to be ashamed of in any case; mostly I was thinking of the psychological effect of few people, much countryside as opposed to the reverse. The illusion of endless resources can be pretty dangerous. Not limited to Alaska, of course; we get the same problem out in the Mojave.

[acchikocchi.livejournal.com]

I think it probably is! And your point about the illusion of endless resources is very well taken, oh boy. Not to mention the marked physical separation from the rest of the country, or really any densely populated areas -- I'll be the first to admit having massive swathes of Canadian wilderness separating you from the next major city and from the rest of the US gives some people this kind of reckless feeling of power and of being beyond the reach of the law. Sigh.

[kayshapero]

Sigh indeed.

Took a few minutes to run around Anchorage with Google Earth today and look at the pictures people have put up. It's not every city you find moose in - wonder what the folks near Griffith Park who complain of deer eating their gardens would think of THAT. :)