What’s wrong with the rest of America these days? There are too many places and hometowns where angry mobs are marching in the streets and hate speech is spewing from their town squares. Why are so many of our fellow Americans at odds about their own history? They are tearing down old statues from their plazas and courthouse lawns, but not everyone understands why. We should teach them a lesson about how to make better use of their public squares. We really should.
Here, in this place we call home and others call the Left Coast, we could never fathom neo-Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan marching in our town plazas. We’ve had many political demonstrations here lately but they have all been peaceful and focused on messages of unity, tolerance and anti-hate.
Every week, we fill our plazas with music, farmers’ markets, charity booths, happy children and lots of genial discussion and good-spirited debates.
In Cloverdale last Friday night a Latin jazz band played multi-cultural music for a multi-cultural crowd. Cloverdale’s chamber of commerce, city government and the Arts Alliance partnered with corporate sponsors to open the town’s plaza to almost 1,000 smiling and dancing people.
The night before, the Windsor Farmers’ Market hosted an “Americana” concert on the Town Green. Singer David Luning sang about “drifting like a ramblin’ man,” carefree across an imagined peaceful landscape.
The free concert scene was repeated at Sebastopol’s Peacetown on Wednesday with The Love Choir and again last Thursday at Rockin’ on the River in Guerneville. At Healdsburg’s Tuesday in the Plaza the only arguments heard were about what wine goes best with what cheese as La Misa Negra played salsas.
We don’t fight in our plazas and town squares; we have parties where everyone is invited. Guerneville’s crowd last week was especially remarkable. Local realtor Herman Hernandez, also leader of Sonoma County’s Los Cien and the evening’s concert promoter, was beaming at the eclectic and energized crowd. There were finely dressed Latino couples, homeless singles, neighborhood groups in lawn chairs, self-proclaimed River Rats and after-work revelers, all dancing to the L.A. band Latino Invasion and their non-stop Cumbia, Salsa and Bachata beats.
This was a scene of a different America than the one we have been witnessing on our TVs about Charlottesville, white supremacy and our amoral president.
It is not just the music or the weekly free gatherings that we could teach to other parts of a disagreeing America.
When our Sonoma County communities were confronted with the killing of 13-year-old Andy Lopez by a deputy sheriff in October 2013, enraged crowds marched several times through local streets and town squares. Instead of the violence that erupted in Ferguson, Missouri from a racially-tinged shooting, our communities gathered in multiple circles for grieving, venting, teaching, listening and learning.
We wonder what we would do if we had a statue of Robert E. Lee, the confederate general, in one of our town squares. Would we be talking about removing it right now? Would we allow white supremacists to come here and promote their racist, anti-semitic and alt-right agenda?
Are we better equipped than other Americans to allow for dissent and the full expression of our First Amendment? Or are we also confused by our own American history?
Confronted with a president and a White House where far-right ideas of “nationalism,” anti-immigration and anti-global trade have been translated into “America First” and “Make America Great Again” what should we do?
Maybe instead of only tearing down old statues we should think of replacing them with new ones. That would certainly stir up a great American debate, wouldn’t it?
