Moving Past a Culture of Fear

We are the most safe, secure people in the history of the planet. Yet, as our safety and security continues to increase, rising almost in direct contradictory proportion is our level of fear. I attribute much of this to our comfort: the level to which we take our quality of life for granted. I attribute more to our hubris: despite the giving nature that resides somewhere in all of us, we default to a place where we believe that our own person and our own family are entitled to something to which the rest of the world is not. However, if I look back over the last five years, I attribute most of this to our reaction to 9/11. Instead of using this opportunity to bring people together, our leaders have taken advantage of this tragedy and turned it into something that not only divides us, but plays upon our comforts and our hubris, forcing us to sink deeper into those realities.

I hoped Madison would be different, that we would build on our progressive tradition of openness and compassion and somehow sidestep this reality. I hoped that we’d show the world how people could react and watch in sadness as the rest of the world tried to catch up. But here we are, in one of the safest places in the world, in one of the most secure times in history, pushing crime, fear, punishment, and public safety to the top of our local agenda. As if this weren’t bad enough, we have taken it a step further by focusing only on reactive solutions, including additional police resources, additional tools for law enforcement, and strategies focused on further dividing an already fractured community.

Madison has held three neighborhood meetings on public safety in the past month, and over 2,000 residents have shown up to decry increasing crime in their neighborhoods. They demanded more police and more support, asking elected officials to focus their sole attention to protecting their neighborhoods. Few, if any, talked about preventive strategies, about poverty or the root causes of crime, about homelessness, about AODA, about childhood abuse or neglect, or about any of the other realities that could cause a person to lose hope and stop caring about the impact his behavior has on others.

Meanwhile, neighborhoods that have faced serious crime for years, perhaps decades, continue to pull together and try to figure out ways to address the root causes of this issue. They fight for affordable housing, they plan mobile food pantries and community dinners to feed their hungry, they beg for additional resources to help their children, and they try to reach through their muddled streets and find hope.

Somewhere in this great city, there resides a solution. A solution that recognizes that society only makes one rock solid commitment to the poor: all one has to do is commit a crime and we will provide him or her with guaranteed food and housing. But where is our commitment to those who don't commit crimes? What of our commitment to one of my constituents, a single mother of four, finally getting her life together, who broke her arm, lost her job, and is now about to be evicted? Think about this, put yourself in these shoes. We are not talking about a hardened criminal, a violent scourge on our society, or a resident of Chicago. We are talking about one of us, one of ours, a Madisonian, living right here in one of the most progressive, wealthy communities on earth. What do we want to do for her?

What of the man who was recently shot in Allied? A horrible, violent act that left him hospitalized and seriously injured. What have we done, in our culture of fear and violence, which has led him to remain unwilling to offer any information about the person who shot him? Is it distrust for our police? Is it the result of a community that has forced the dialogue into us versus them? Is it fear of retribution from his attacker? Or is it his residence in a world outside of that which we can imagine, yet one only a few miles away, where things like this just happen, where life goes on, where it could have just as easily turned out the other way? What do we want to do for him?

People must feel safe. There is an inherent instinct here that drives our behavior and leads us to make decisions we’d otherwise not make. It led millions of white, middle class people to flee to the suburbs for a generation, leaving behind nothing but huge pockets of poverty, scant resources, and decaying inner cities. We can’t allow that to happen in Madison. So we must respond to that which we are hearing. We must stem the very real fear that exists. But we also must work together to help our citizens get past this fear, to help us all understand that the fear itself almost certainly does more damage than the violent act that preceded it. And if we really care about saving our community, we need to move past law and order and find a way past all this violence. If we want peace in Madison, we must have justice. So let’s add police and resources and address this fear. But let’s also recognize that we must be in this together and focus on the root causes of poverty that often lead to crime in the first place.

There are so many solutions that we know work. Just around the corner from Allied Drive resides the Madison Apprenticeship Program (MAP), the brainchild of one woman whose drive for change makes more difference than a dozen new police. One graduate entered the class homeless and jobless. He secured housing and now manages an apartment complex and paints as an independent contractor. Another graduate spent the last dozen years dealing drugs. He now works at an area service station, signing up for every extra hour of overtime he can find. There is a second generation drug dealer who graduated and now works as a sales clerk and attends MATC, working to become a lab technician. Another graduate fought with others regularly, used drugs, and was always involved with police. Now she is employed as a technician with a communications company and is taking computer classes at MATC. She hopes to have her own computer business one day. Just four examples of how, for both the individuals and for our community, engaged participation can trump incarceration.

If we want to move forward as a community and solve this problem, we will have to work together. We may have to put aside our hubris and step, however briefly, outside of our comfort zone. It’s pretty simple: if we are divided and acting out of fear, we’ve already lost.