TERRORISM STRIKES AGAIN
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX

Ten people have been shot in the Washington, DC area by a sniper; eight have been killed. One of the most recent was an African American man, Ken Bridges, who was the co-founder of the MATAH network, an economic development organization based in Philadelphia. Bridges, a graduate of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, had just called his wife, Jocelyn, when he was shot. He leaves six children.

While this death may hit close to home in the African American community, all of the deaths and shootings have had a devastating effect on Washington, DC and the surrounding areas. When I went to walk this morning, walking in a straight line, I collided with a woman who was walking zigzagged. When I asked her why she was walking so funny, she said she wanted to make it difficult for anyone to take aim at her. People are ducking behind their car doors filling up their gas tanks, schools are keeping children indoors, and everyone is speculating about who might be responsible for these killings. In the suburbs, where crime rates are often low, people are paranoid. In the city, where people are used to crime, some shrug off the sniper shootings as a high-tech form of the drive-bys that plagued inner cities a few years ago. But in both the city and in the suburbs, people are guessing about the identity of the sniper.

I don’t have enough evidence to assert a racial divide, but casual empiricism suggests that many whites want to assert that the sniper is Middle Eastern. They connect this terrorism with Osama bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein. But many African Americans remember Timothy McVeigh and wonder whether the sniper is one of his ilks. If the sniper is Middle Eastern, of course, it strengthens George W. Bush’s case against Osama bin Ladin, and perhaps even against Saddam Hussein (even though there is a significant difference between the two men). What will Mr. Bush say if the sniper is one of our homegrown terrorists?

The fact is that the word terrorist has been thrown around far too easily in the months since September 11. The word is used without context, without the notion that there has been global and domestic terrorism throughout history. We use the word without realizing that black folks and other people of color have been victims of terrorism since we came to these shores. That was acceptable terrorism, though, nothing especially worthy of comment.

No terrorism is acceptable. Btu we have been indifferent to terrorism in the rest of the world and now it has come to us, to suburbanites, to white people. Random shootings are old news for inner city African Americans. We need to put all of this in context as we deal with the issue of terrorism. And we need to be clear that African Americans are victims both of homegrown terrorism and its more recent iteration.

The death of Ken Bridges reminds us that good black folks, like good white folks, can be caught in this crazy crossfire, in a world that now seems to operate without rules. Except there are rule, and we’ve repeated then to ourselves time and again, especially after September 11. Nothing is promised, not even tomorrow. Remember? Any of us could go pumping gas, going to work, or just crossing the street. It doesn’t have to be a terrorist, home grown or international, inflicting the pain. It could simply be the randomness of life.

That said, we all need to get to the root of the crazy terrorism that now shapes our lives. If it is domestic, why, and why have we turned a blind eye to it for so long? If it s international, what have we done to make others hate Americans so, and how have we changed that since September 11. Does our disproportionate support of Israel, to the detriment of others in the Middle East, endear us to others, or does it alienate? How does our eagerness to engage in war with Iraq affect terrorism? And why isn’t’ there more discussion of these issues, more discussion of a war that would potentially have thousands of fatalities.

There is a reward for information leading to the arrest of the sniper. The public is contributing the fund, which has now grown to half a million dollars. Additional funds will be used to help the families of people who were killed, and some separate funds have been set up for individual people or families. The Ken Bridges Memorial Fund will help his wife, Jocelyn, and their six children. Money can be sent to the Ken Bridges memorial Fund, c/o Milligan and Company CPAS, 105 North 22 Street, 2d floor, Philadelphia, Pa. 19103.