2008-02-09

Work and mourning

Yesterday I started a new job working at a special library in downtown St. Louis. I'm temporarily helping out while one of the librarians is out on medical leave. It looks likely that I'll work for the rest of the month, updating the Liber8 website , helping out on the Liber8 newsletter, and anything else that they can train me on fast enough for me to be useful.

Having a job to go to yesterday was a bit of a relief, given that I live in Kirkwood where a mass shooting took place at City Hall on Thursday night. Endlessly surfing the internet news reports to piece together the facts was not serving me well -- going to work was an improvement.

Kirkwood really is a small town.

I know the mayor because he owns a rental house on the same street as our old house. I disagree with him on several issues, but he is always a delight to chat with. The rumors in town today are that while he suffers from two bullet wounds in the head, neither are in the brain. At 69 years of age and not particularly robust health, recovery is not certain, but there is hope.

Sgt. Biggs wrote up the accident report when I was rear-ended last year. I remember him just as he is described in this memorial article on STLtoday, a calm and friendly presence, everything I want a Kirkwood cop to be.

I didn't know Connie Karr personally, but I was planning to vote for her for mayor in April. She often voted in the minority on the council, usually to make everyone take notice that there were ordinary Kirkwood citizens who weren't being listened to as well as they could be.

All the names of the other victims and the shooter were familiar to me from regular reading of the Webster-Kirkwood Times.

Perhaps the best answer to "why?" is this account by the former Kirkwood High School principal, Frank McCallie, of his interactions with "Cookie" Thornton over the years. The situation is complicated; there are racial issues but it's not just that, not even, I believe, primarily that. I believe that there is a lot of room for unity and for healing together as a community if enough of us choose to enter that space. #

Comments:

Hello Joy,
Thanks for writing this post and linking to the principal's thoughtful explanation of what happened in Kirkwood...

As an outsider, it really helped me to better understand the dynamics that lay under the whole tragic event.

And, it resonates with me in my daily experience as well. I work in a neighborhood which has been known to be somewhat racist towards non-whites, but now is an incredibly diverse neighborhood. I think that there are times when people come into the library with a chip on their shoulder, because they expect to find prejudice or racism... and so ironically, they create a situation with racial tension where there was none. Or, conversely, I have also seen and heard people say and act in racist ways towards different non-white ethnic groups when they thought they weren't being observed. It goes both ways... Racism and reverse racism. Prejudice is there, but then there is also pre-emptive defensiveness in the midst of acceptance, which then turns what was once acceptance into bitter feelings, laying once more the foundation for further racism and prejudice.

When will this cycle stop?

# posted by

bookishdesi : 3:21 PM