Letter to the A-News Editor, 11-14-07

I am really angry. I’ve been watching for the past several months, with a sort of passive indifference, the often ridiculous front-page stories featured in the Athens News:

Beer pong, hay shortages, a mellow Halloween. Don’t get me wrong, I see that all these stories have relevance to the loyal readers of Athens’ only locally owned newspaper. My problem is this: while Athens whiles away the days here in relative bubbleicious bliss, the world around us is in turmoil. Specifically, I am appalled that I learned about the case of Megan Williams on Democracy Now! (www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/14/1438201) rather than in my much-loved Athens News.

Megan Williams is a 20 year old African-American woman who was kidnapped and tortured in West Virginia earlier this year by 6 white men and women. She was held captive for one week, forced to eat human, dog and rat feces, stabbed repeatedly, threatened with death, raped repeatedly and assaulted with racial slurs. Her captors were charged with kidnapping, among other things, but have not yet been charged with a hate crime.

This is important regional news, especially considering the current climate of racial tension in our quiet little Athens community. Monday’s A-News highlighted this tension. (The story, however, was put in a small caption on the front-page under the story about hay. While this is a rural community and the hay shortage will impact many people and the local economy, I question whether it is as relevant as the story of Mahoney’s assault on two women of color on OU’s campus and the subsequent outcome of his trial. Especially since the majority of A-News readers presumably live in the city of Athens and not in the rural areas surrounding.)

The story of Mahoney’s assault and the hung jury at his trial (Monday, Nov. 12) very much relates to the story of Megan Williams in West Virginia, less than 100 miles away – which is certainly close enough to warrant attention from the Athens community. It is clear here that the justice system is a failure. Jurors were asked to convict in Mahoney’s case on some technical definition of the term “menacing” rather than on the real, pervasive impacts of a racist, sexist culture which continually and institutionally protect aggressors due to the color of their skin, their mental imbalances, their “unintentional” racist attitudes, whatever.

Mahoney should be tried for a hate crime, regardless of his mental health. People with mental illness should not be exempt from the consequences of their actions simply because they are ill. The illness can be an explanation for the crime, but not an exemption from the consequences of it. Has he expressed any remorse, has he apologized to the women, saying that he could not control himself due to his disease? Was he undergoing treatment for Tourette’s at the time? Has there been any indication that he feels badly about his actions or the repercussions in the lives of these women or in the community at large? Has he volunteered to enter into treatment or as a result of his actions? These are important, yet unanswered questions in the article. We as a community and the justice system at large continue to avoid the real issues of institutionalized racism and the hate crimes it ignores, or worse, protects through misidentification.

And the idea that these women did not feel threatened by this incident is utterly ridiculous when they (and we) are enmeshed in a culture that includes Megan Williams, the Jena 6, the continued shootings by police of unarmed black men throughout this country, the incarceration of black men and women at a rate that is far higher than that for whites, and so many more incidents of institutional and personal racism.

I love Athens. I love the Athens News. I know the A-News tends to focus on very local news and I appreciate that. But I would love to see more substantive stories on the front pages. I would love to see local stories in their non-local context. It seems significant to me that there have been 45 noose hanging incidents in public places across the country since the Jena 6 AND that Athens is currently experiencing a spate of racially charged incidents.

Making the connection is the media’s job. In this age of corporate media, only locally owned, independent media outlets are capable of making these connections. No matter what we might want to believe, Athens does not exist in a vacuum. Our issues, ie, the bulldozing of hillsides, the explosion of big-box stores, the gnawing hunger of poverty, the smart-growth/corporate growth debate, the economic and environmental effects of farm subsidies, the impacts of institutional and personal racism – these are part of a much larger national/international trend of the consolidation of power and are symptoms of the final destructive throes of a collapsing economic system.

The disconnection of local issues from their global context drives home the feeling of isolation that is killing public dissent and effective political action in this country. We are a part of the world. The world is reflected in us. Make the A-News relevant to our underlying knowledge of ourselves as global citizens who live in a great little community in southern Ohio. And get Democracy Now! on WOUB as soon as possible.

Sara DeAloia is a white woman who strives to be an ally to oppressed people. She believes anti-oppression work is one of the most important things white people can do to change the world.