Pipe Bombs, synagogue shooting, and the demise of civility in America by angry white men

by Reggie Jackson, Milwaukee Independent

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” – Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Letter From a Birmingham Jail

I write this essay with a heavy heart. I have had to console so many friends over these past few years that suffered tremendously due to hate-related gun violence. There have been too many unnecessary deaths because of hatred that it makes me want to cry.

I saw close friends from the Jewish community shed tears on October 27. It breaks my heart to see this pain.

People from my community have been victimized over the years. As blacks we walk around with a target on our backs, never knowing when some person full of hate will express their rage violently. I visited Mother Emmanuel Church last year while in Charleston, South Carolina. To see the scene of such horrific violence was disturbing.

We have seen over this past week the power of hatred in America. The mυrder of two innocent African American senior citizens in Kentucky on October 24 was followed by the massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue, where eleven Jews lost their lives during worship services. These tragedies were occurring in the wake of over a dozen pipe bombs being mailed around the country to people seen as opponents of the President. All three of these events have a common denominator: the perpetrator was an angry white man.

We love to say politics does not matter in these types of tragedies. We are less than two weeks away from the midterm elections. The national election results could shift control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate from Republican to Democratic control. The governor’s campaign in Wisconsin could wrestle control of the office from Scott Walker to Tony Evers. There are critical elections around the country.

In the midst of all of the divisive political commercials we are missing the bigger point. There has been a rise in hate speech and it has found its way into our political discourse. People are dying as a result of the current political climate…

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