Over the Edge + March, 30 2011

opinion 3

A Personal Encounter

Slap to the face

MAGGIE D CONTRIBUTOR

While walking me home late at night, my fiancée was assaulted. He had been slapped on the face, and threatened. The police were involved, and after finding the assailant, he was arrested and placed into a different police vehicle while we were giving statements.

Suffering from anxiety, this event was a huge mark for me, and the fact that it had occurred not 2km away from my own home, in a seemingly safe, well lit and populated area, made it even heavier for me to handle. As the police got involved, however, some of the weight was lifted. As a child, | was informed that no matter what, the police would help, and do the right thing. | felt at ease knowing that the assailant, who had a woman’s purse and a DVD player in his bag, would go to the jail for the night.

The next day the police officer came for a second round of statements. It was then we learnt that ac- tions would likely not be taken, and that that night that my fiancée had be physically assaulted, the assailant was driven a few blocks down the road and then released. The officer had explained that it had been a busy night for them, and even though we had not done a thing wrong, and even though we had been wronged, the assailant would likely not be pursed for this.

As citizens of Prince George, and a student at UNBC, | have not done anything wrong. My fian- cée and | pay taxes, obey the law to every extent,

Alternative Paths

and yet the one time we have called upon Prince George for a little help, we seem to have been turned away. While it’s reasonable to assume that lengthy charges would not be filed, we had at least hoped for the piece of mind that the obviously im- paired male would been jailed for the night. One male officer, the supervisor, had even suggested that my fiancée should have just punched the as- sailant. An odd remark, considering we were not

aware if he had a gun or other weapon on his body.

| now feel more violated by the Prince George Police Department than the assailant, who had caused me a mild panic attack and several nights of bad dreams. But what does this mean? That

in order to receive proper defense and sense of security, we must be a minority, bleeding, drunk, high, a repeat caller, crying, or visibly hurt? That in order to feel safe, we must have called before with a similar situation? Would I, or my fiancée, have been taken a little more seriously if we had been more offended than scared? Would it had helped if | did not hold back my tears as we sat in the police car, the offender looking directly at us from in front of the police vehicle?

| had heard many times about the failing police action in Prince George. Snide remarks following the article released about how Prince George was the most dangerous city in Canada to live in by McLeans suggested that... but never before had

| considered it was because of faulty action of the police force.

Influences of a family background

PAUL STRICKLAND CONTRIBUTOR

The Working Forest

A Poem

PAUL STRICKLAND CONTRIBUTOR

We are promised a working forest. Not enough of the world at work you see. Let us say a prayer for the soul of Stakhanov.

Thirty thousand hectares of forest were downsized.

The rest had to pitch in and work overtime.

But no payment for overtime unless pre-authorized.

That’s the policy, don’t you understand?

A forty-eight-year-old aspen was removed as deadwood.

There’s not time or money to train.

The younger ones have been around computers since they were twelve And they don’t have to be trained.

We have to manage the managed forest.

Everybody had better stop complaining and start co-operating.

The fox was docked for punching in five minutes late. The squirrel was fired for stockpiling supplies.

The bear was given five days’ suspension

For scratching inappropriate memos on trees.

The wolves had better stop whining, pull up their socks And get down to work right now.

The new plant manager won’t stand for any nonsense. The stream burbles far too much

And should be rationalized and restructured.

The porcupine is wasting time taking a coffee break. Too much idle chatter from the tanagers in the conifers.

Everything must be managed and all must get down to work. Total Arbeit wird Total Krieg wird Total Sieg! Simplemente puro trabajo por todo el mundo.

OVER THE EDGE WILL BE HAVING ITS AGM On

WEDNESDAY MARCH SOTH AT 3PM IN THE WINTER GARDEN

In my view the term “family background” could be defined in two ways — either as ancestry and the cultural surroundings in which a person grew up, or as one’s upbringing interpreted through the lens of religion or psychology. Maybe there are other ways to define it as well.

| will focus on the first definition.

The novelist Kurt Vonnegut, in a book of essays entitled Palm Sunday, said one’s upbringing starts 150 years before birth, as ancestors’ religious views and economic station have influence reaching that far forward from their day.

However, Alan Wolfe, a current theorist of liberalism, although he does not comment on Vonnegut’s view specifically, says this kind of view reflects a conservative form of Romantic nationalism, under which the community of the nation through its history of shared experiences forms an individual’s personality before he or she is consciously aware of the influence, and that personality, dependent on the health of the nation, is destiny. He would say that, by contrast, under liberalism, the individual has responsibilities to the community through supporting the level of taxation necessary to provide decent social programs, but is free within that context to set a course free of unreasonable restriction by the nation or the fatalistic feeling that one’s family or cultural background has predetermined what one’s course in life will be.

In my case, if there is any determinism in family background, it may be the source of my frequent confusion and indirection in my life. On my father’s side there

were Missouri and Oklahoma farmers, carpenters and electricians. My grandfather’s name and family background were English, while my grandmother was of German- American background. When my grandfather lost the family farm in 1923 because of collapsing prices for his crops,

the family moved to Los Angeles where my grandfather became a drywaller. The Depression of the 1930s made things worse, and my grandfather was on what was then called “relief” for three years in the Dirty Thirties. He had been what was called an Old Southern Socialist during

the 1920s, but then, as a result of this misfortune, joined the Communist Party U.S.A. He was inspired by what was believed then to be Stalin’s liberal 1936 constitution. I’m told he would talk at the family dinner table about how wonderful things were in Russia. My grandmother, who became a conservative Republican, responded, “Well, go there then, if you think it’s so wonderful over there!” (A Polish friend at UBC in the 1970s said, “That sounds like it was a marriage made in heaven.”) My grandfather was disillusioned by

the Stalin-Hitler Pact of 1939, and was afterwards just

a discouraged old leftist. My paternal grandmother and grandfather obtained a legal separation after the Second World War.

My father reacted to this background by being a politically bland centrist. He would change his party registration to Republican when a Republican was elected president

and would change it to Democratic when a Democratic candidate won the presidency. He didn’t rock the boat as an electrician early in his working life or as a teacher in his later career.

My mother’s parents were of Scottish Presbyterian background. Ancestors arrived from Dundee, Scotland, in the 1870s. In the early part of the last century my maternal grandfather, a pharmacist, owned the largest pharmacy in Casper, Wyoming, which had a small jewellery store and gift shop on the side, something like a Shoppers with a Rialto’s shop but not a chain store. My grandmother was mainly a homemaker but she worked on Republican Party committees, wrote columns for newspapers, including columns supporting Republican President Herbert Hoover’s

unsuccessful campaign for re-election in 1932, and wrote short stories.

| guess this explains my parents’ endorsing first a conservative Baptist church in Lexington, Nebraska, in the 1950s and then the similar Nazarene Church in Reno in the late 1950s and early 1960s. And it may also explain

my moving from conservative Goldwater and Nixonite Republicanism through Ayn Rand’s objectivism in the

late 1960s and early 1970s, then into libertarianism in the mid-1970s and next a shift to an environmentally oriented Liberal Republicanism in the late 1970s because of what

| encountered covering the Reno City Council (before the Reagan revolution of the latter part of 1980, when Liberal and moderate Republicans were invited to leave the

party). It would also perhaps explain my move finally to an independent social democratic view through the influence of George Orwell; extreme long hours at a non-union newspaper in Alberta throughout the 1980s; the experience of covering a bitter meatpackers’ strike in Brooks, Alberta, in the mid-1980s; and the influence of eleven years serving as a union officer in the 1990s and early part of this decade and seeing the impacts of downsizing first-hand.

My grandmothers almost certainly would disapprove

of my independent social democratic views, while my grandfather on my dad’s side would probably consider me too right wing from his point of view. | do manage to offend both conservative fundamentalist friends on the right and centre-right, while also offending academic left- liberal multiculturalists on the politically correct left. Maybe family background does explain this, as well as perhaps my maternal grandmother’s influence on my eventually becoming a journalist (although, when | was a boy, she wanted me to go to Stanford University to study law).