<p>I was very disturbed to recently read several accounts of violence around Juneteenth celebrations in different areas of the country. The event in Austin hit especially close to home because that is where I grew up and also attended grad school. That episode of violence was extremely disconcerting. Apparently, a man who was dropping off a co-worker of his in a townhouse parking lot accidentally bumped a young child who was in the parking lot. Being a responsible person, he stopped immediately to tend to the injured child (the child sustained non-life threatening injuries and will thankfully be fine), and when he got out of the car, he was attacked by a number of people who were in the parking lot. The friend he was dropping off saw what was happening and got out of the car to protect the driver, but the friend was subsequently beaten to death by several angry people in the crowd. His sister was notifed by someone who lived in the complex, and she came out to find her brother choking on his own blood. :(</p>
<p>For some reason, I cannot shake this image, and it has really bothered me on a very deep level. It’s bad enough to take someone’s life with a firearm. But, to actually BEAT someone to death takes much more sustained anger and “effort,” and there is just something HIGHLY disturbing about beating someone who has tried to behave responsibly and make sure a child he accidentally hit was going to be o.k.
<a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/21/crash.assault.ap/[/url]”>http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/21/crash.assault.ap/</a></p>
<p>This is truly terrible and shocking B…and surprising violence for a town like Austin. But what I want to know is why are there Juneteenth celebrations outside of Texas? I had no idea people in other states celebrated the day slaves were emancipated in Texas.</p>
<p>Sadly, it seems that nihlists are increasingly drawn to public celebrations (parades, concernts, festivals) just to intimidate and harrass honest folk trying to enjoy themselves.</p>
<p>^Another regionally specific historical event (a single Mexican battle victory over French) blown up into something huge for commercial reasons. Can I say…during all the time (many generations) my family has lived in the Rio Grande Valley, I have never seen or heard of a Cinco de Mayo celebration anywhere? I know it’s a big thing in recent years in larger American cities…but I do believe Americans celebrate the day more than Mexicans.</p>
<p>My point is though…we don’t celebrate in Texas, the day that slaves found out they were free in…say…Florida or Alabama… I wonder does Syracuse have a day of celebration for dates of emancipation in states other than Texas?</p>
<p>ldmom–Juneteenth celebrates the end of slavery in America. It is considered an important date by many African-Americans, and represents for them more than a local holiday. June 19th, 1865 was two years after the Emancipation Proclamation and months after the end of the Civil War. It took that long for slaves in parts of Texas to learn they had won their freedom.</p>
<p>Thus, it’s celebrated around the country. To say it’s limited to Texas would be equivalent to saying that Texans shouldn’t celebrate the Fourth of July because that happened in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>I don’t think I like that analogy at all garland. Juneteenth was not celebrated anywhere but Texas (with one exception) until very recently. In my Texas hometown, for as along as I can remember, we’ve always had big Juneteenth celebrations…and I am very familiar with the history and importance of Juneteenth which is covered quite in depth in Texas History classes required in the Texas public education system. </p>
<p>My point is, Juneteenth is the day slaves in the State of Texas found out they were free. Why do we not celebrate the date slaves in other states found out they were free? It’s not a point to bicker over…but to me it just seems an odd thing.</p>
<p>IMHO, the Juneteenth history is such a secondary issue to the egregious violence I cited above. Truthfully, I’m pretty amazed that I’m one of the few blown away by the devastating image of a man “doing the right thing” being beaten so severely that he lost his life. Maybe my ability to conjure this mental image is just greater than that of many others, but I find it truly sickening.</p>
<p>No, berurah, I was with you on this one. I reflected back on Crown Heights Riots in Brooklyn, which had some similarities and differences: child injured by a vehicle, angry crowd, and subsequent killing of a bystander because he was in the wrong racial group; coupled with old animosities. At Crown Heights, both the child and the bystander died; riots went on for days; and it launched Rudy Giuliani into the mayoralty of NYC over David Dinkins. (Wiki)</p>
<p>Years later, a TV documentary (or maybe it was an indie movie I saw on TV) called “Crown Heights” documented the lives of two individuals who tried to build bridges in their community, to “stop the hate, keep the peace…” (I might be misquoting it, but you get the idea). The two young men focussed on getting a simple basketball game to happen between two sets of kids who otherwise would not even talk to each other. </p>
<p>You ask what can be done, and I think sometimes that devoting one’s efforts to changing the mind-set of a small number of young people closeby is very much worthwhile, like this basketball game. If 24 kids had an experience that one of the others (whom their parents hated) could be encountered, then 24 people might be the ones to say to those around him, “No, not “everybody” from that other group is like that; I know different.”</p>
<p>Think globally; act locally. Do what you can do, right nearby, and never think it’s meaningless just b/c it’s “small.” I know you do a lot in your hometown, B.</p>
<p>I am with you on this also. I just have nothing to say…it just frightens me to death that we can do this to one another. I do not understand it, I can not think of anyway to stop it and it makes me so sad for the world that we behave this way.</p>
<p>(Okay, I know this is off topic…) ldmom–maybe I’m wrong, but I thought it’s because it was the last place in the country that slavery ended. So, in effect, it’s the end of slavery in the US. That’s why it would be different from when it ended in other states.</p>
<p>Actually, it was later reported that it was away from the celebration and involved very few people so who knows. I do know mob mentality is a very real phenomenon.</p>
<p>Ya know, maybe this is where the random acts of kindness and the whole pay it forward idea come into play. We can fight the bad with the good. We at least have control over what we do each and every day and maybe, put a little more positive in the day than negative. Just a random thought because I’m still thinking about it.</p>
<p>The scary thing seems to be that things like this go in cycles - incidents can feed off of one another and seem virtually contagious from one part of the country to another (sadly, one almost feels that the mere reporting of these stories invariably leads to the next one). In the Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell points out that these things can seem almost viral or epidemic nature in nature. He also describes studies that have shown that the larger the crowd, the more likely it is that onlookers will do nothing to help or prevent a situation, even one as bad as this (he mentions the infamous Kitty Genovese case - in 1964 in NYC, 38 people watched a young woman being fatally attacked for <em>half an hour</em> on a city street and not one of them called for help). Apparently, responsibility is diffused and as strange as it sounds people seem to even have a harder time recognizing a situation as being as serious as it is, if they are surrounded by others, as opposed to on their own.</p>
<p>Not sure that’s exactly what happened here - as sax says in the Austin incident they are now looking for three or four people, rather than the much larger crowd originally thought to be involved. Regardless, what an awful story.</p>
This was a spillover crowd from the Juneteenth celebration. There were parking issues, and the crowd spilled over into the townhouse parking lot. What occurred in the parking lot was not part of an official Juneteenth celebration though. I do think, however, that the media is being extra careful to separate the two. I do not think the separation is as distinct as it is being portrayed though.</p>
<p>^^^ I agree with that. The sponsors of the event in the other cities as well as Austin seem quite anxious to separate the events, as they are probably concerned about the reputation of the celebration as well as the potential to incite further violence if any group sees this as a hate thing.</p>
