Really? This in response to a friendly, straightforward Get-out-the-Vote letter that my daughter and I sent to fellow Durham Democrats in our neighborhood.
So it's okay that people make calls like this? to a neighbor no less? Especially when you're a registered Democrat who would logically receive such a letter? I don't know why she's chosen to register as she has, perhaps to vote more effectively in local primary elections, but she shouldn't be surprised to get mailings from the Democratic Party. What bothered me the most, though, was the hate in her voice. Why not a simple, polite call that asks me to remove her from my mailing list?
I was watching the funeral service for Congressman John Lewis when the call came in and fortunately didn't answer. The anger I felt simply listening to the message was hard enough to contain. I felt like calling her back with an equally hateful response or sending her a demeaning letter. But I thought instead about John Lewis: his humiliations, his arrests, and his beatings. The hatred he endured over a lifetime of 80 years dwarfed my bad encounter with a neighbor. Like him, I wouldn't let this experience poison me.
Still, it's hard to know what to do with hate. Martin Luther King, Jr., would counsel love. Others, forgiveness. For me, it's enough to say that I might understand my neighbor if I had lived her life. And while I won't exactly turn the other cheek, I'll refrain from meeting hate with hate. It's the best I can do right now.
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