Babble, hum, buzz, jabber, prattle, chatter.
These are some of the seemingly endless droning of words we hear in the months leading up to Tuesday’s voting.
Liar, denier, crook, hypocrite, immoral and unethical are some of the implied meanings of those words we hear.
Words have the power to lift our spirits or debase us; give us hope or destroy our dreams. Words tiptoe into our senses, creating images and sending messages.
Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me is a lie. Fat, dumb, creep, yellow, loser and all the epithets for race, gender, politics and religion have the power to harm and kill, or haven’t you been watching the news these days.
That is why this year’s topic of the South Suburban Diversity Dinners, Sticks, Stones and Words Matter, is so relevant. As has been the case the last two years, this year’s session will be from 6 to 8 p.m. this Thursday on Zoom. You can link to it by connecting online with [email protected].
Hildy Kingma, who last year retired as Park Forest’s director of economic development and planning, notes these diversity “dinners” have been in place for more than 20 years; first as get-togethers over meals in homes throughout the south suburbs, then from 2015 as meetings at Rich South High School and for the last two years as Zoom discussions.
“We have all heard there are words that sting other people or put implicit limits on them, but we don’t know why,” Kingma writes. “We want to understand and avoid the hurt we know that words can have.”
Flossmoor, Homewood, Olympia Fields, Park Forest, Richton Park and University Park, both Homewood-Flossmoor and Rich high schools, and housing centers and civic groups through the area sponsor the event.
Thursday’s meeting will include a video on implicit bias, in which people react to situation with prejudices or stereotypes without intending to do so. An example might be a man who believes in equal opportunity in the workplace for both men and women but always hires men and never asks female workers for advice.
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One two-hour meeting may make some understand their own inbuilt prejudices. In the past, these sessions seemed to be a feel good “preaching to the chorus” exercise. But then again, these days and in the wake of recent events, it may be a good thing to remind ourselves that we are all a member of some or another minority.
See you Thursday.
Vote
The first time I voted was some six months after I turned 21 and it was the national election of 1956. I took my absentee ballot and walked to the Boone County courthouse in Columbia, Missouri and cast my choices for president of the United States along with Illinois state and local offices.
I remember that I proudly told the clerk this was my first vote and that she smiled.
It was a time when early voting was a distant dream and people stood in line sometimes for hours waiting for their chance to cast a ballot in an era in which political debate was not limited to 10 second mind-numbing insults and lies on media that numb the senses. It was also the last national election without a presidential debate.
We can vote early but we always go to our polling place on Election Day.
We always vote.
Honor flight
The distance in time between Election Day and Veterans Day is less than one week, and this year the Park Forest Veterans Commission will sponsor its annual Veterans Day program from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. this Thursday at Freedom Hall. This year the event will feature a Huey helicopter Honor Flight over the village with the oldest vet in Park Forest.
Because Park Forest was conceived as a home for veterans returning from World War II, there has always been an interdependent connection between the community and those who served this country. The village began as a “G.I. Town,” and through its permutations over the 73 years of its existence, there has developed an unbreakable bond between the community and the community of veterans.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.