Let's Review....
...talk about “lowered expectations"
Arrest of 78 adults and 13 juveniles in Denver called “smooth cruising.” ["smooth" ?!?]
In San Jose, Thursday: 15 felony arrests and 18 misdemeanor arrests, issued 115 citations; Sunday: 110 people were arrested and about 900 were cited. “Cinco de Mayo means Fifth of May in Spanish—Thursday’s date—and has come to symbolize Mexican pride.” Pride in how many arrests? how much damage?
The mayor of Richmond CA: “[Police] showed restraint and tolerance and, when the confrontation became inevitable, they had the resources and procedures at hand to address the problem with minimum use of force.” Is “tolerance” what you really want your police department to show when people are breaking windows and throwing bottles at them? Call me a nut-case; I don’t.
LOS ANGELES (AP)—Rumors of impending violence between black and Hispanic gang members kept an estimated 51,000 students away from city schools on Cinco de Mayo. ...A circulating e-mail rumor had said that Hispanic gang members were going to use the traditional Mexican holiday to attack black gangsters in retaliation for drug thefts, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton said.
Santa Rosa CA Op-Ed: “But what’s clear is that this now-annual showdown with police has become the main Cinco de Mayo event for many.” [great! let’s throw a riot for the Todds...]
The Cinco de Mayo overtime cost for sheriff’s personnel alone was $45,000. Several other agencies participated, but their costs weren’t immediately available. [yeah—and we’ll foot the bill! That’ll keep ‘em happy.]
Is that what “tolerance” really means; has it become desirable to allow people to take over the streets parade without a permit, wave flags of a foreign nation, throw rocks and bottles, break up businesses and attack police? And to allow only some people to do this because of their race; isn’t that the very definition of racist?
It’s as though we are coddling particularly ‘delayed’ children; allowing them to get away with behavior we would not condone in any adult because we can’t expect any better of them. We’re adjusting our standards of behavior lower—just for them. [yanno - we would never have adjusted in this way for an ‘African’ ‘holiday.’]
Were I a member of that particular group *I* would feel mortally insulted. “Oh, yeah—we’ll spend some extra money and expect to put up with a little rioting cuz we know you people can’t manage to control yourselves and act decently.”
That’s the statement we’re making to the “Hispanic Street.”
A symbol of Mexican pride? I’ll grant that May 5th is the day that victory was declared way back when, but it was against the french.
Where does pride come into it?
Posted by on 05/09/05 at 04:10 PM
Next entry: El Zorro Strikes Back
Previous entry: *eye roll*
