On Friday, I attended Dr. Spencer Crew’s lecture titled “Civil Disobedience, the Underground Railroad, and Henry David Thoreau.” Dr. Crew talked about the importance of how the words chosen in his title are interconnected at a certain degree where they can co-exist.
It was interesting to see his take on a well-known French philosopher, studying and sacrificing his life’s work to help those at a disadvantage in at time by going against the bigoted government. Sadly, I wish I could say the same about the location in the above picture.
After leaving Doty Recital Hall, I received a message from my mom. She informed of yet another swastika sitting in Pittsford, NY at Nazareth College. For those of you not from this area, Pittsford is a couple towns over from Victor, NY (the town in the anti-slavery fair ad). I am well aware that it is 2018 and this advertisement was enforcing the idea of civil disobedience and abolition, but clearly some people are still unaware of how much incidents like these affect others. In class, we discussed the idea of history repeating itself in a ‘what goes around, comes around’ manner. Unfortunately, this ugly part of history made a reappearance in today’s society. Also, the fact that this isn’t the first time Pittsford displayed racist symbols of this sort and no real push back has occurred for any of these sightings. It’s was quite disheartening for me to learn about how progressive these towns were during the time of slavery, compared to how pro-separatist they’ve become overtime.
Usually, when I write in blog posts, I don’t intend on writing about current events, due to how political and divided opinions can get or how uncomfortable people might get having a discussion about stuff like this. However, when it comes to the safety of others, especially in an area that’s relatively close to this region, I think it’s important to let people know what still happens in modern times. Hopefully this time around, more action is taken to convict those who’ve caused such commotion and fear in this town and beyond. The more conversations we as a community have, the more people can understand the viewpoints of others, so we can all try to live and work with our differences.