My other encounter with hate crime comes from a CD. As an avid musical fan, I love to listen to discs during the time in which they take place, JC Superstar on Good Friday, She Loves Me twelve days before Christmas, and so on. Which includes Parade on Memorial Day. Listening to the tale of Leo Frank, a man pardoned by the state of Georgia sixty-nine years after being lynched for a crime he didn’t commit, never fails to anger me. I realize that this is a dramatization of events that occurred, but the power of the hate in it overwhelms me. People use the phrase, “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups” as a joke. The cold terror that is the truth of this statement strikes at my heart. Knowing that there are people out there egging each other on to do terrible things against another group of people, knowing that I am a member of one of those terrorized groups, saddens me. Is there no happiness for me and my kind? How many people have to die before this stops? Is my reaction to the earlier-mentioned attack scene completely without basis? I guess the bite for me to chew on is bigger than I thought.
OMT (one man’s thoughts)