Hometown Hero: The Gift of the Hero

SUSAN CLOKE
Columnist
Santa Monica Mirror

A sunny, summer day, a good day for a grandmother to push her one year old grandchild in a stroller along Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica.  Then the unthinkable occurred. It was shortly after 3:30 in the afternoon of July 11.  A man tried to take the baby from the stroller.  The baby was strapped into the stroller and the man could not get the baby out.  He then began to try to choke the baby and to tear the baby’s clothing. The grandmother defended her grandchild.  The man attacked the grandmother and punched her in the face, all the while continuing to try to get the baby.

Then the obvious, the thinkable happened.  A man who was also walking along Wilshire Boulevard came to the rescue of the grandmother and the grandbaby.  A Good Samaritan who heeded the biblical command “to show mercy.” He was able to keep the attacking man away from the baby but not without being attacked and injured himself.

I say the obvious, the thinkable, because he did what was right, he came to their aid. So how could it be that there was only one person who came to the aid of the grandmother and the baby?  They were, after all, on Wilshire Boulevard near Centinela Avenue in Santa Monica.  It was the middle of the afternoon on a nice day.  Where were the people in the nearby stores or the other people passing by on the sidewalk?  What about the many people driving by in their cars?  Thank goodness for the man who came to their rescue.  But how could it be that only one person stepped forward?  The grandmother and the baby needed help.  Their protector needed help.

There were four 911 calls, and maybe more, to the Santa Monica Police Department  (SMPD).  The police arrived at 3:41 p.m., within three minutes of the first 911 call, a longer than usual SMPD response time due to the beginning of rush hour traffic.  

The attacking man, now officially the suspect, physically attacked the first officer on the scene.  They struggled, other officers arrived, and the suspect was arrested.  He was taken to the Santa Monica Jail where he was booked for attempted murder, kidnapping, child cruelty, and assault, as well as other charges.  Bail was set at $500,000.

The police did their job and did it well.  The anonymous protector, our very own anonymous hero, did the right thing and did it without wanting recognition or reward. I am grateful for the presence of the rescuer, for his mercy, for his willingness to act and to protect the grandmother and the baby.

Not every one of us is strong enough, or well enough, or able to take on an attacker such as this suspect.  And safety is always the first concern.  But there are actions we can all take.  First, we can and should call 911 and let the attacker know we have called. If needed in order to be safe, stand on the other side of the street and yell out that you have called 911. Second, be a witness.  Watch and remember so that you can give information when asked.  If possible, be part of a group of people all calling 911 and all letting the attacker know you are all calling and all watching.

The SMPD reports, “Many suspects who engage in assaultive behavior, will stop if they know they are being watched by many who are also in the process of reporting such activity.” Again, the SMPD emphasizes, “Safety for everyone is the main concern.”

Societies have myths and heroes going back as far as history can record.  New myths and new heroes are continuously created.  Many of the adults who witnessed this assault grew up with stories of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Obi Wan Kenobi, and Yoda. Many are now reading Harry Potter and know Dumbledore and Sirius Black.  Many know Superman, Batman, and Spiderman.  We need and love these myths.  We admire, even idolize heroes.

We can’t all physically fight the forces of evil.  But we don’t need to be able to physically fight to do the right thing. Heroes come in all forms.  They share qualities of empathy and mercy that move them to take action.  It is their actions that define them.

Martin Luther King Jr., a real American hero, said “Morality is like a muscle, if you don’t exercise it, if you don’t do the right thing every time you get a chance, it will atrophy and, when you need it, it won’t be there for you to use.”

I am thankful the grandmother, the baby, and the man who came to their aid are recovering well. I hope that we, as a community will always be able to rely on each other when help is needed.  I believe it is a wonderful gift to be in the right place at the right time to be able to help another person.   It is a gift to all the people involved and to the entire community.

What Say You? Thinking About Hate

May 4, 2011.  Santa Monica High School.   A brown practice dummy suspended by a rope in the wrestling team’s locker room, an African-American student chained to a locker, racial slurs being used, all are allegations currently under investigation by the Santa Monica Police Department.  Depending on the outcome of the investigation the involved students could be charged with battery and with violation of the Hate Crimes law, a serious charge with potentially severe consequences.

I was interested in what students at the school were saying and thinking.  When I asked some of the Samohi students what they thought, I got some surprising answers.  Although my sample was not large enough to be statistically significant, it was unusual in the consistency of the responses.  For example, I learned that racial ‘jokes’ happen all the time in high school.   That friends will call each other by names that, in the past, would have been considered racist, and that this will happen among students without regard to their ethnic heritage or racial identity. 

Okay.  That might be true with regard to language.  Culture changes.  Language changes to reflect the changes in the culture.  But what does this say about the actions in the locker room?

Student responses to the May 4 locker room incident seemed to divide the act into two parts - the chaining and the rope around the dummy.   Chaining students to lockers is something that has commonly been done to other wrestling team members, has been considered a prank where no one got physically hurt and has been part of wrestling team locker room culture at Samohi for a long time. 

By contrast, the rope around the dummy was understood as “horribly wrong.”  It was also characterized as “teenage immaturity” and “really bad judgment.”  It was not something that had happened before, not part of the wrestling team locker room culture.

In fact, it was a student at the school, a member of the wrestling team, who walked into the locker room, saw the dummy, saw the way the other team members were reacting, and immediately took the dummy down because he didn’t want any of his teammates’ feelings to be hurt.

The wrestling team culture, and apparently every team has its own traditions and history of pranks, has also been described as one where the team members are bonded to one another, as ‘having each other’s backs.’  It’s a demanding sport and the student wrestlers are together a lot, at practice, at tournaments and they become very close.

The wrestling team students who were involved received a suspension from school.  The wrestling team as a whole lost their locker room privileges.  They will also participate, as student teachers, in a section of the Freshman Seminar – a class designed specifically to study the hateful and violent effects of discrimination and racism and to teach tolerance and understanding to students.

So many questions must be asked and answered.  Because of the history of racial abuse in our country, allegations of racism must be taken seriously.  It will be up to the SMPD to investigate and determine the answer as to whether or not this is a hate crime. It will be up to the Sheriff’s Department to determine whether the Administration responded appropriately.

Where does all this belong in the larger culture?  What does all this say about youth/boy culture?  Is this the same thing that has been going on for years, a holdover from past concepts of masculinity? Is it bullying? Is it hazing? 

The wrestling team at Samohi is racially diverse and although, still mainly boys, girls have shown more interest and are now part of the team.  In other youth sports, when girls joined teams, their presence often changed locker room culture.  Will that pattern be repeated?

The righteous rejection of racism, the concerns of the damage and destruction caused by racism, and the fear that it is emerging at the school are all central tenets in this discussion.  The idea that the students involved will be judged, not by their actions and intent, but by the perceptions of the past, needs to be examined.  The generational change in culture needs to be understood.  There is the concern that the wrestling team, as a whole, will suffer for the actions of a few.   The school community may have to look at the possibility that they will be legally required to make decisions and take actions which are not in the best interests of the students involved, the other wrestling team members, nor of the entire student body.

It is important that these questions get asked and that, as a community, we set standards.  These are hard questions.  Questions that require careful and thoughtful examination and open discussion.

In every crisis there is also opportunity.  My hope is the school, the Board Members, the Administration, the students, the parents, and all of Santa Monica will use this as a learning opportunity to re-examine the question of racism.  Equally important to our future is that we discuss and deliberate on the events of May 4 in a principled way and that the process itself exemplifies the tolerance and empathy we hope to teach our students.

What Say You?

Hometown Heroes: Charlotte Biren and Jenna Perelman

Charlotte Biren and Jenna Perelman
BIKE IT!  STUDENTS THINKING GLOBALLY, ACTING LOCALLY

Charlotte Biren and Jenna Perelman, Santa Monica High School seniors and co- presidents of the Samohi Solar Alliance (SSA), have been thinking about the natural environment and preparing to be environmental stewards since their elementary school days.  They shine with confidence in their understanding of what needs to be done to create environmental sustainability and a commitment to get the job done right. 

 “We get huge support from the other students at Samohi,” said Biren.  Listening to Biren and Perelman, it seems the students now at Samohi have learned they need to be stewards of the environment and are preparing themselves to do just that.

As co-presidents of SSA, Biren and Perelman were lead organizers in this year’s Bike It Day.  SSA started Bike It Day four years ago to give students a way to help reduce Santa Monica’s carbon footprint.  On Bike It Day students of the Santa Monica School District bike, walk, skateboard or take the bus to school.

The first Bike It Day had fewer than 100 participants, all at the high school.  On June 1, 2011, Bike It Day this year, 3,300 students, from Santa Monica High School, Lincoln Middle School, John Adams Middle School, Santa Monica Alternative School, Edison, Franklin, Grant, McKinley, Muir, Pt. Dume, Rogers, Roosevelt and Juan Cabrillo, participated, and 700 of those students biked to school.

“When kids participate in Bike it Day they realize it’s easy and many kids start biking regularly,” said Perelman.  “Now more than 120 students bike to Samohi and we need more bike racks for daily use.”

“The event has proved to be extremely beneficial to our community, bringing together all the schools, parents, students, administration, and local businesses in an effort to combat global warming, one bike at a time,” said Richard McKinnon, a parent of a Samohi student, an avid cyclist, and Chair of Bike It Day.

“Bike It! Day has really become a citywide event, with the city helping out by putting up road arrangements and signs, and providing staff to control traffic. The Santa Monica Police Department will be out — both on cars on bikes — to keep students safe,” said McKinnon.

The Samohi Solar Alliance started in 2004 with the idea that putting solar panels on Drake pool would be good for the environment and save almost $30,000 per year for the School District.  The student members of SSA got to work, got help from parents and PTAs and community members, raised money and brought solar heat to Drake pool.  SSA’s next big project was Bike It Day.

Both Biren and Perelman went all the way through the Santa Monica School system.  Both give credit to their elementary school and junior high school teachers who took them to the beach.  By the time they got to Junior High they were taking school trips to Catalina and Yosemite to learn about ecosystems.  They measured trash on the beach, counted bird populations, and learned to gather the facts and make decisions based on science.

Thinking about her future Biren said, “I’ve studied ballet since I was 5 and I love dance.  I play the viola in the Samohi orchestra and I teach viola and I’ve tutored at the SM Library since I was in 6^th grade.  I want to continue with these activities all my life.  But I am also in love with the natural sciences.  I am a science-oriented person.  This summer I will be a volunteer intern at UCLA in a molecular biology and chemistry lab.

“I follow the work of scientists such as Shai Agassi who is using science and business power to achieve greatness in future alternative energy.  I went to hear Robert Kennedy Jr. speak about mining in the southern part of the U.S. and what that has done to the environment, the economy and people’s lives.  It makes me even more determined to use science to do good things.”

Perelman, who wears vintage clothes because “it’s better for the environment and I love them,” said, “I started biking to school in the 8^th grade on the days I didn’t have to lug my alto sax with me.  Now I bike almost every day.  Perelman volunteers with the Jewish Big Sisters and has a ‘little sister’ she mentors.  This summer she will be a counselor in training at the Jameson Ranch Camp for part of the summer and an intern in a photography studio for the other part.  She plans on a gap year between high school and college and hopes to travel to Machu Picchu before going to college where she will study environmental law.  

“I think a lot about going into politics,” said Perelman.  “I love talking to people and I love public speaking, but then again, I’m 16 and I don’t know what’s going to happen, so things could change.”

Now in a place of honor in their respective homes are  Environmental Youth Awards, which they received for their leadership in SSA.  The awards are for “outstanding achievement in environmental stewardship” and are signed, “Barak Obama, The White House, Washington D.C.”

I worry about water quality, air quality, our carbon footprint, global warming, sustainable cities, sustainable agriculture.  I worry that world governments are chasing the arguments of the last century instead of protecting our collective future.  I worry that many countries are depriving themselves of the possible contributions to society of half their populations by denying women the right to participate fully in public life. 

But after meeting Charlotte and Jenna, I worry less.

What Say You?