Bleeding Ireland And Black America
...can be
seen shivering in the adjacent park. We walk past the Catholic neighborhoods
knowing, at any moment, buildings might explode and automatic weapon fire could
lacerate the air on every side of us. Belfast is charming, apart from the harsh
reality of guerrilla warfare and terrorism being common occurrences. For the
first time, throughout my three month tour of seventeen different European
countries, I feel truly threatened. The tension carries itself into a nearby pub
where an old man asks "Are you jus daft? Or do ya have relatives here?" His
words hinted at my grandfather's blunt, yet kindly, expression concerning his
birthplace in N. Ireland, "If you haven't been there yet, don't go there."
I can remember the lyrics of a Naughty by Nature song blaring over my
car radio, "If you have never been to the ghetto, don't ever come to the ghetto,"
as I put in a tape. My thought stream continues as it takes me to another place
where guerrilla warfare and terrorism are a part of daily life.
The gunshots and unruly pitbull barking registers over the calm of the
wet playground. Trash strings the streets and every dwelling has an eight foot,
black, metal fence circuitously about it. Two white faces gape over the hood of
a parked Cadillac. Besides the police parked down the block, they are probably
the only Caucasians in a five mile square radius. Two companies of drug dealers
fire at will scrambling for control of a superior capital making outpost. Even
at nine o'clock in the morning the combat tract roars on.
I was one of those faces peering over the car hood with horror and
revolution in my eyes. N. Richmond is a product of the same type of oppression
and violence that hacks deep into the people of N. Ireland. In the logical
evolution of an oppressed people a civil rights movement was essential. "It was
necessary to bravely confront our most explosive issues as a...
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