My neighbor, Ann Hoffman, was personally attacked in a Letter to the Editor last week by another neighbor, J. Wilson, whom it is hard to identify with just a first initial. Ann was word-mauled for brush clearing around her home. J. argued that people like Ann were killing the natural chaparral. Instead of celebrating for having saved her home in the most recent fire, J. suggested that Ann and her family “move back to the cancer/city.” This unneighborly letter went on with other personal slaps and references with which I don’t agree.
I suffered my own unneighborly incident on Saturday when, while joined with other Malibu neighbors to demonstrate our feelings against the war with Iraq, someone leaned out of a car turning south on Webb Way, and yelled, “Go back where you came from.” Why did he presume we came from out of Malibu? Does living in Malibu automatically mean you’re for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq? Or does is it mean that if you’re a person of color or demonstrating on a street corner you couldn’t be from Malibu?
Okay, the man who yelled at us to go back where we came from and J. Wilson who wrote the attack letter about Ann were just exercising their freedom of speech. God knows, I believe in and often exercise my own right to freedom of speech, but are we wise to dump civility in order to communicate a difference in opinion?
Do we really advocate yelling in our neighbor’s face when we don’t agree? “Sure,” say the two neighbors who told Ann and me to get out of town, but only as long as they can remain, in essence, anonymous.
So now you’re wondering what brush clearance and the War with Iraq have to do with being a good neighbor? First, come the personal attacks in writing, then the yelling on the street corner, then the stones thrown but secretly at night? Before you know it, there’s a kind of neighborhood war being waged. And isn’t war the ultimate in unneighborly conduct?
The following are not my words but they are wise words-“Love thy neighbor as thyself” and “Thou shalt not kill.” It beats the hell out of me how the most basic of God’s wisdom can be so easily ignored in any neighborhood and in the world at large.
Mona Loo, executive director
Malibu Community Labor Exchange, Inc.