Letter: Ghetto politics is divisive, alienating

I’ve lived in Glendale for 10 years. I’ve never seen such an angry little town with so many peoples clamoring that their faction’s cause, pain, history, persecution, suffering, torture be assuaged first and foremost. It’s a competition in Glendale, one I myself was deep in the mud-pit of when another one began: the controversy surrounding the memorial for the Korean comfort women.

I was not initially absorbed by this piece of art but eventually got curious about its many symbols, like the clenched fists for anger and the empty chair for those who have passed. These are women who had their lives taken from them in brutal manner, and this statue has every right to be angry. Instead it is brilliantly quiet and peaceful. This statue showed me my own anger and my own place in this Glendale melee. It changed me.

Ghetto politics serves nothing but its own self interest. By all of us competing for the Most Wronged Culture Award, we are doing to each other what we are so angry about “them” doing to “us.” Ghetto politics brings no one together; it’s divisive and alienating.

This statue is perfectly placed. We need to take its cue and leave the ghettos behind.

Grey James
Glendale