Yesterday was an interesting day for a number of reasons.
After I found my way to the Middleboro MA MBTA Commuter Rail station and getting there quicker than expected, I checked the on-line schedule to see if there was an earlier train, only to find there had been a snow day change that meant I would arrive at my destination in Boston later than would have made the trip worth it. That meant driving to the closest Red Line station to get the train in town to jump on the Orange Line to get to Roxbury Crossing which had changed so much since I last spent any time there.
I had taught up the street at the James P. Timilty Middle School in Eliot Square before moving out to California for a series of unpredictable adventures until returning back to Massachusetts twenty-six years later.
Eliot Square was where George Washington had lined up the cannons taken from Fort Ticonderoga and mixed them in with some large logs painted to look like cannons so that the British would be frightened enough to leave Boston and never return for the duration of the Revolutionary war. The Thomas House he used a his headquarters till stands next to the James P.
Although the Heights upon which George faked out the British now looks over the Back Bay and South End, at that time Boston still looked like a lollipop, and that area was still tidal water having not yet been filled in.
The Islamic Society of Boston has its mosque and community center just down the hill from the Jame P. and at the bottom of the Heights.
But I wasn’t there yesterday to wax nostalgic, although I did walk around the area taking pictures and noticing the changes. I was there to be part of the We Have Your Back action, the Human Wall of Compassion to show solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters during Dhuhr, the midday prayer.
When I taught at the James P. we had some Muslim students who are now adults circling around 40 years old.
We formed a line on the sidewalk in front of the Islamic Society of Boston along Malcolm X Boulevard and Elmwood Avenue being respectfully silent during the prayer.
The rules were strict:
“This event will occur during Dhuhr or midday prayers. We will not partake in the prayers but It’s important that we stay SILENT when we arrive, during the prayer, and QUIETLY disperse after the prayer (12:30pm).
– SIGNS: If you want to make a sign, please use “WE HAVE YOUR BACK”.
– RESPECT the property and the Muslim community by staying on the sidewalks that surrounds the Mosque, and by not causing delays to those entering the property. If the sidewalks by the Mosque is full, PLEASE use the other side of Malcolm X BLVD (Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center).
– Feel free to take pictures and videos but please maintain complete silence.
and, of course,
– Please avoid carrying large bags.
I brought a sign based on the above cartoon.
From past experiences, I was expecting some opposition and, perhaps, some sort of counter demonstration to our non-existent one. But there wasn’t any. A few cars drove by giving the thumbs up, and a bus load of middle school aged kids that pulled away from the athletic center across the boulevard clapped and cheered.
No curses, no middle fingers, no spontaneous vehicular political pronouncements.
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We were there to show those inside that not all Americans are hateful, and the news stories tend to emphasize the hate. Standing outside, we saw no hate.
A high school aged young man wearing an apron came out from the Mosque’s kitchen and shook all our hands, thanking us for being there, as did a few other, older men and women including the Imam.
In today’s atmosphere complete with its hyperbole and outright lies, it cannot be easy to be like everyone else in every way but your religion, and be the object of hate and suspicion directed at you by those who only know Muslims as movie bad guys and because of the minority that are political extremists.
I had been living in Oklahoma City for Two years, teaching at a multi- cultural, racially diverse school. On the day of the Murrah Federal Building bombing in 1995, as the result of what was being said on the live media about how obvious it was that it just had to have been a Muslim terrorist attack, the Muslim children in my school were fearful, and many of their peers, who up to that point were friends, were emboldened to act out faux patriot based bullying.
Muslim parents took their kids out of school as quickly as they could get to them, and I know of one parent who took her kids to relatives out of town to wait and see if it would ever be the safe again.
We had two Middle Eastern teachers on the faculty, one Catholic and one B’hai, but they were subjected to anti Muslim actions of the students and their parents. One of them got home after all the students had been dismissed safely, as it had been determined this was an isolated incident and not part of a larger attack, to find his neighbors, who knew him well, standing on his front lawn with signs and shouts directing him to go home.
Within two days it became public that the attack was not by Muslims, but by a white citizen born and raised here. The expert induced actions against the Muslim community just quietly went away, like a guilty person slinking into the shadows with no one really acknowledging that the negative and threatening actions had happened and with no apologies.
It took some time for our Muslim students to start returning to school.
I knew them as people, and nice people. I knew the two teachers as dedicated people.
I knew what they had had to deal with was just wrong on so many levels.
Until yesterday I had not been in a position to do anything in the form of a group public action, having been limited to personal encouragement and words of empathy to those students.
The naysayers might say that as nice as the action was, it really didn’t accomplish anything.
I say that it did.
For one day, even if it was for one hour, the people in the mosque saw, or at least knew there were people outside displaying solidarity and not hate. So for one day in an endless collection of them where hate rules, there was a moment when it didn’t.
We got invited inside where they offered us coffee, and two women offered us dates as we entered.
I do not like dates. I suffered date/nut bread as a kid, and when l lived in Southern California, a group trip to Palm Springs was not complete without a stop at Hadlee’s for a date milk shake. I drank, I smiled, I pretended.
But yesterday, I took the three dates offered and enjoyed them.