March 5, 1999/17 Adar 5759, Vol. 51, No. 23
Put on a clipEditorialA group of youngsters from our neighboring state of Colorado have proposed a wonderful idea. Attach a paper clip to your shirt collar or cuff to protest hate - a simple twist of metal to demonstrate the potential for coming together. The students are encouraging people to wear paper clips April 11-18, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's annual Days of Remembrance. They may be on to something.Hourly headlines report less about what brings us together than what tears us apart. News from Israel details the internal battle to reconcile Jewish law and civil authority. Name calling, vitriol and insult alternately feed and give testimony to the heightening tensions between Orthodox and secular Jews. Elsewhere in the world, specters of hate surface. In Germany, the rightist National Democratic Party is attracting skinheads in their late teens and also older, embittered men and women with a cry for an ascendant Germany. In the former Soviet Union, cries of "Glory to Russia!" sound a sickening refrain, especially when they come from militant members of the Russian National Unity Party, dressed in black and flaunting barely-disguised swastikas. Nationally, news suggests a deep-seated hatred lurking just below the surface of the national psyche and a frightening propensity for violence. In Texas, a black man is chained to a pickup truck by white supremacists, then dragged to his death. In Wyoming, a gay college student is tied to a ranch fence by local toughs, then beaten and left to die. In Arizona, women's studies programs at the state universities come under attack, a thinly veiled attempt to rein in tolerance of sexual preference. A debate in the state legislature about insurance benefits for partners of gay employees results in less than civil discourse on a bill to outlaw such benefits, flushing out deep-seated homophobia. Jews, blacks, gays. One lesson to be learned is that labels feed the dangerous stereotypes that divide us. Think about those humble paper clips. What more eloquent way to make a statement about the ties that bind us all than by wearing them on our sleeves? |
