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Yesterday’s words reflect today’s despair |
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Written by KYLE STOREY
Citizen columnist
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Sunday, 24 August 2008 |
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"Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.
"We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be!
"We all know things are bad -- worse than bad --they’re crazy.
"It’s like everything, everywhere, is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.”
"Well, I’m not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad!
"I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot. I don’t want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.
"All I know is that first, you’ve got to get mad.
You’ve gotta say, ‘I’m a human being, damn it! My life has value!’
"So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!'”
Hard to believe these words were uttered 32 years ago in one of the most famous movie scenes of all time.
This speech from the 1976 movie Network could have been written yesterday.
It’s as apropos now as it was then.
Maybe more so.
In the aftermath of a downtown fire which has claimed the lives of three city residents, it’s time we all stood up and said, “We’re mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore.”
I have been struck dumb for months reading story after story in this paper about gang violence on the streets of our city.
When it was scumbag killing scumbag, somehow the violence didn’t seem so bad -- maybe it was even fitting.
But, over the last few weeks things have escalated.
Now we have gun battles in broad daylight.
And if speculation is correct, an attack on a local business which left it burned to the ground is just the latest outrage committed by organized crime.
If, in fact, local gangs cannot be connected to this fire and what should be subsequent homicide charges, that’s no reason for our collective outrage to be diminished.
This type of behaviour is typical of criminal gangs, and if left unchecked will become the norm, not the unusual.
Police have long used the spectre of gang violence to justify increasing the size of the force and intensify training and formation of tactical squads.
Yet, more than 20 years after the Hells Angels became a legendary institution in this province, police still seem powerless to stop them.
According to published reports, Canada has more Hells Angels members per capita than any other country in the world, including the U.S.
Gang warfare isn’t even on the radar for our federal politicians, and provincially, if they speak of it at all, it’s just to pay lip service to the problem.
And locally, the silence if deafening.
One can only hope city council has a plan.
And hope this plan is more effective and quicker off the mark than the plan to battle air pollution.
Regardless of what our politicians and police have up their sleeves, the onus is on us, the silent majority, to speak out. To make sure our voices are heard.
To let the politicians and police know we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 24 August 2008 )
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