Dangerous dispatches

School officials became aware of the planned attack when an adolescent schoolgirl revealed to a teacher that she had been cornered by a group of fellow students, insulted and kicked, all because of her Jewish heritage. The alarmed staffers were able to draw descriptions and names of the perpetrators, which resulted in ten students being suspended off school grounds for a day.

In response to the troubling incident, Margaret Jackson, the school’s supervisor, has demanded that 15-20 minutes be set aside each day so that the entire student body, which ranges in ages from 12 to 15, be taught the principles of respecting one another and how to prevent bullying.

But what happened in Naples cannot be described as just a simple act of “bullying” or immature adolescent disrespect. We were all kids once and we all know how mean kids can be at times. But the North Naples Middle School event was frighteningly different. It was an organized attack of terror on a single race and it was laced with violence and vengeance. Precisely the type of vengeance that would spark similar acts of violence, and that would inevitably result in the organized mass murder of Jewish Europeans in the 1930s and early 40s.

The Holocaust monument inside the cemetery with an actual brick from a Nazi concentration camp (Photo by Vincent Zandri)

Think that's stretching it a bit? Here's what David Barkey, a representative of the Florida Anti-Defamation League had to say about the occurrence at the middle school:

“You are talking about an incident that has anti-Jewish bias, if not anti-semitism. You have Jewish students being singled out, harassed and assaulted.”

While American media was quick to pick up on this unusually organized bit of youth violence, this is what has not been widely reported: the North Naples Middle School incident is not isolated. Some months ago a strikingly similar incident occurred more than a thousand miles away in St. Louis at the Chesterfield Parkway West Middle School during a so-called “Hit the Jew Day.”

During the hate-driven episode, at least one Jewish student was physically assaulted with a fist to the face. At least that's what school officials fearing the loss of state-funded revenue over “anti-bullying laws” will admit to. But it is known for certain that at least 10 of the school's 35 Jewish students were slapped.

Despite the troubling nature of “Hit the Jew Day”, the school district spokesman managed to put a rather light-hearted spin on the ordeal by saying that the students were merely hit on the “back of their shoulders,” while only one was hit in the face.

No biggie, right? I guess that when it comes to anti-Jewish attacks, severity is a relative term.

But one thing seems clear. The “Kick a Jew Day” event in Naples eerily parallels the St. Louis occurrence in both intent and action, which makes me wonder just how many of these premeditated violent acts are being carried out all across the US and quickly hushed up by school authorities.

In these trying economic times, school districts have been particularly hard hit with budget cuts. Fines levied over bullying incidents only promises to diminish school funding all the more, not to mention the obvious blemish on the school's reputation. No one wants to be publicly known as a Jew hater. Especially an entire school.

Even more disturbingly, the anti-Jewish events in America haven't been limited to adolescents and school playgrounds. Earlier this year the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC became the sight of a racially inspired homicide when an 88-year-old white supremacist opened up on the crowd with an automatic rifle.

The old Jewish cemetery in New York's Capital City once the site of anti Jewish defamation (Photo by Vincent Zandri)

A couple of month's earlier, Wesleyan University student Johanna Justin-Jinich was killed in an anti-Jewish provoked murder while working at a campus bookstore.

A month before that, a Pittsburgh-based white supremacist male shot and killed three cops after they responded to a 911 call placed by his mother. Sadly, the hatred hit-list is growing.

Maybe America has always been as accepting of the Jewish faith as Israel herself, but as journalist Jeffery Goldberg points out in a recent article for The Atlantic, which addresses the subject of rising anti-Semitic attacks in the US, “the combination of right-wing fury, and Islamic rage is a nasty one.” In a word, not since the 1930s has it been so dangerous to be a Jew.

But incidents like “Kick the Jew Day” and “Hit the Jew Day” cannot be swept under the political rug or relegated to a soft school supervisor spin. The violence that culminated against European Jews in November 1938 was not a spontaneous act brought about by a few rotten apples as it were. The carefully planned, premeditated retribution was a watershed (or, I should say, bloodshed) event in that it paved the way for the Nazi-designed program of Jewish extermination that would come to be recognized as the Final Solution.

The students who organize these hate events need to clearly understand the severity of their actions. A punishment of school suspension only manages to give the kids the excuse they want to get out of class and spend more time with their first-person video kill games. These bullies should be “scared straight” into realizing that what they are accomplishing with “Kick the Jew Day” or “Hit the Jew Day” is nothing less than the same evil perpetrated by Nazi Germany, albeit on a smaller scale.

Perhaps the final solution for these troubled youths is to introduce a “Kick the Bully” day in which anyone and everyone who has ever been harassed by a bully – Jew, Christian, or otherwise – gets an opportunity to enact their just revenge. Only then can an anti-Jewish hate monger, white supremacist or schoolyard bully, know what it feels like to live in a state of constant fear.

But for many Americans, Thanksgiving couldn’t be a more bitter holiday. Only yesterday it was reported in the Washington Post that “35.4% of young African American men are unemployed.” Not since the Great Depression of the 1930s has more black men (and women) been deprived of a chance to earn their own way. While this recession has been described as an “equal-opportunity offender,” it’s not hard to see that it’s just a little more offensive to those members of society who make up the African American population.

A downtown bodega where drugs are often dealt

Take the case of 24-year-old African American Delonta Spriggs, who lives right around the corner from the Obamas in Washington DC. Busted recently for selling drugs in order to care for his three-year-old little girl, the poorly educated single father has become a recession-era statistic. He resides in his mother’s apartment where he spends most of his days watching soap operas and brooding over his unemployment status. After a series of dead end gigs, the longest lasting job he’s been able to land as of late is as a temporary flagger for a construction company. And even that lasted only a week or so. When it comes to describing his situation, Spriggs isn’t playing the equal opportunity recession card. Not by a long shot.

“I think we’re labeled for not wanting to do nothing—knuckleheads or hardheads. But all of us ain’t bad.”

According to the Post, it’s people with Spriggs’ racial makeup and age group who have been hit the hardest during a recession that’s looking more and more like Great Depression Part II. Cost conscious employers are cutting internship programs and on-the-job-training is shunned as too expensive. In other words, why train when you can hire someone on the cheap who already knows what they’re doing?

A shy and semi-anonymous Kimberly goes about her workday

Things haven’t been any easier on young black women either. The unemployment rate for them hovers around the 27% range as of time of writing. Nearly double the national average. But then, amidst all the doom and gloom, you can find the occasional ray of light. For instance, you wouldn’t even know there’s a recession by asking Kimberly, a 40-something African American employee of a bread-and-butter shop in upstate New York.

“Most people I know are working,” she says, setting a new pot of fresh coffee on the burner. Then, wearing a sly smile, “Besides, you’re not working, you’re no friend of mine.”

Kimberly, who shows up to work every morning before five takes pride in her work ethic and her work. But pride alone does not produce jobs.

What’s the biggest motivator for finding work in America these days?

“Hunger. That’s what my father always said,” or so attests Paul Zabinski, a 42 year old sheet metal fabrication owner of Polish heritage. “The worst thing you can do is pay people not to work,” he goes on to say. “They want to live for free and no country can afford that.”

Sure, temporary economic assistance is available to those who can’t find a job. And many people, white and black, abuse the system, making a kind of perverse career out of living on unemployment, food assistance and welfare. It’s the kind of reality that really hurts small business owners like Zabinksi, who often finds himself working a 60-plus hour week just to keep himself in the black.

Could Obama spend more to create jobs?

Almost certainly. But where are the trillions required going to come from? The government is already teetering on insolvency. But a $3.9 federal stimulus did allow Spriggs to receive 19 weeks of on-the-job training not long ago. Problem is, when the training was over, so was any hope for a job.

“I thought after I finished the program, I’d be working,” he says. “I only had three jobs with the union and only one of them was longer than a week.”

Equal Opportunity?

The downtown Albany Mission where the unemployed and poor will share a thanksgiving meal under the watchful eye of the Lord

Maybe young African American’s have been hit hard, if not hardest, by the recession, but then so has Wall Street. Of course, that didn’t stop the very people who helped create the recession in the first place from awarding themselves millions in bonuses despite the fact that last year was the sixth worst year on record for the troubled securities and exchange institution. The corporate greed monsters even drew the attention of President Obama, who called their divvying up of nearly $20 billion in executive compensation bailouts as “shameful.” And this year those same year-end bonuses are projected to increase by some 40%

Where’s the outrage, America?

No doubt many of these white collar devils will have no trouble sleeping at night while young men like Spriggs roll around on their mattresses wondering where their next good meal is coming from.

Will lack of work force people like Spriggs to go back to dealing drugs?

“It has you wanting to go out and find other ways to make money,” he admits. “People go out hustling and doing what they can to get by.”

But that doesn’t necessarily mean a return to the illegal life. It just means that Spriggs will take anything he can get right now to put food on the table. And no, he cannot expect to receive a year end bonus at Christmas time.

“Give me a chance to show that I can work,” he exclaims. “Just give me a chance.”

I hope for Spriggs’ three-year-old daughter’s sake that he gets that chance. I hope that while the Wall Street tycoons sit down to fill their bloated stomachs on Thanksgiving turkey and champagne, they pause for a just a brief moment to remember the countless thousands who will have nothing to celebrate, nor anything to eat on the equal opportunity holiday that celebrates the good life in the land of plenty.

Riding the escalator hundreds of feet down into its subterranean depths, I can’t help but wonder if these tube stations also doubled as Moscow’s civil defense system in the event of an air raid. It occurs to me that while I shivered in my childhood bed at night, convinced the big one was about to drop at any moment, the Russian people were warm and cozy beneath down comforters, knowing that safety from nuclear annihilation was only a Metro stop away.

Three stops later I find myself in an area called Taganskaya. Here I will find the entrance to an underground bunker that advertises itself as the Cold War Museum. Directions to the place are cryptic at best. According to a full-color brochure I found at the hotel, I must seek out a four-story yellow building that’s surrounded by a green-painted iron fence, the gate of which will be topped with a Soviet-era red star.

How could I possibly miss it?

I emerge from the underground onto a street corner that’s congested with Muscovites going about their busy day. Not knowing which way to turn, I begin a directionless search for the museum. I pass ancient churches, cafes, a theatre, numerous apartment buildings, shops and more. But no museum. No green gate. No Soviet-era red star. I’m also navigating roads and narrow side-streets identified only by the alien-like Cyrillic spellings. This isn’t Manhattan where the streets and avenues are marked by numbers on a grid. The danger of getting hopelessly lost inside this city becomes so real, I begin to feel a tell-tale wave of ice water shift up and down my backbone.

But then it happens.

Just when I’m about to give up on ever finding it, I spot a four-story building that meets the description. The place is surrounded by a green fence, with a big red star mounted above the gate.

This isn’t like any museum I’ve visited in my life. There’s no parking lot, no signs or billboards marking the spot. No nothing. There’s only a narrow driveway, with a black four-door Mercedes Benz sedan parked at its top.

Slipping past the Mercedes, I face the gate, attempt to pull it open. But the gate is locked. Reaching out, I depress an intercom button that’s mounted to the gate below the red star. An electronic buzz reverberates, followed by a tinny voice. The male voice speaks something in Russian. I have no clue what is said, but it doesn’t sound friendly. Is this the Cold War I’ve been waiting for?

Soon a man appears. He’s middle aged, dressed in brown slacks and leather jacket. He’s smoking a cigarette. With a stern face, he opens the gate and, with a wave of his hand, asks me to step inside. After the gate slams shut behind me, he tells me to wait where I am.

“Someone will come for you,” he says in broken English. He then turns, disappears back inside the building.

Surrounded by an iron fence and rough bricks walls, I feel suddenly very much alone. I also feel more than a little trapped. Behind me, a fence-mounted video surveillance camera records my every move. Not far from it, mounted to an adjacent building’s old brick wall, is a telephone. A heavy, black plastic job like they use in all the old Hollywood secret agent movies. When the telephone explodes in rapid-fire clangs, I almost jump out of my combat boots. I don’t know whether to let it ring, or pick it up. If I answer, will a sly, evocative voice on the other end tell me to proceed to a secret door?

But then, just as quickly as it started, the phone stops ringing.

I feel a presence over my right shoulder. A beautiful apparition emerges through a solid metal door. Tall, shapely, with long blond hair, blue eyes, tight fitting Levis, black leather boots and a snug black turtleneck sweater, this woman would have done very well as the double-crossing love interest in a Bond flick. The blond Svetlana approaches me, a slight grin painting her face. In my mind I’m thinking, perhaps I’ve died and gone to Cold War heaven. She holds out her hand for me. I take the warm hand in mine and squeeze it, ever so gently. What I wouldn’t give right now to introduce myself as, the tall, swarthy, “Bond…James Bond.”

But I’m just five-feet-seven inch Vin Zandri from upstate New York.

Taking back her hand, she apologizes graciously and, in broken English, tells me that the bunker museum is closed for the day. That English speaking interpreters are available by appointment only. In a word (or acronym anyway), I’m S.O.L.

“You come back tomorrow, yes?” she poses.

“I’ll be on a plane to Italy in the morning,” I explain.

Her smile grows wider, warmer. She sets her hand on my shoulder.

“You must visit Moscow again,” she says, as if making the trip to this part of the world were like a quick skip-and-hop to the local Starbucks. But then, feeling her hand on my shoulder, I sense that I am not standing inside the fenced in courtyard for the last time.

Turning, she heads back for the door, but not without issuing me a quick, over the shoulder, second look. Maybe I didn’t get to see the Cold War Museum, but my excursion here was not without its warmer moments.

Arriving back across town to my hotel, I decide to stop in local tavern for one last taste of the local Moscow beer. I head down a set of stairs into what appears to be a converted wine cellar. The atmosphere is decidedly laid back, while a young couple shares a drink at corner table inside the dark, brick-walled bar.

A young black T-shirted man occupies the stool beside me. He’s chewing the fat with an even younger bartender. On the wall behind the bar, a flat-screen TV is broadcasting a football match between Liverpool and Madrid. It might be European style football, but the rival players are kicking the living crap out of one another. It’s more like a rugby match than a pleasant soccer contest. Furious fists are flying all over the place. So are the penalty flags.

The young man is wiry, with cropped black hair, healthy smooth skin and pierced ears. I peg him for a year or two older than my 19-year-old son. When the bartender doesn’t understand my beer order, the young man takes the initiative and translates on my behalf. A tall mug of cold beer set before me on the wood bar, he turns to me, asks me the question I always get when I travel: “You are American, yes?”

He’s excited to tell me that his older brother lives in Los Angeles. He hasn’t seen him in five years. He would like to visit him someday. However, 15 to 20 hours on a plane is impossible to contemplate. But I sense that something else is preventing him from leaving his hometown. Something deeper than braving the friendly blue skies inside a cramped Airbus.

Cocking his head, he says, “In Moscow, a flat is very expensive. But in Los Angeles, my brother has his own flat and a car. He has good job. He has lots of money.” Assuming a smile, he belts out a laugh. “So how you like Moscow?”

I tell him I’m utterly fascinated with it; that I am disappointed about having to fly out in the morning. There is still so much to see.

We talk more, about New York City, about American football versus soccer, and inevitably we discuss politics, old and new. We talk about the Cold War, a war he is too young to remember, but a war that his parents remember quite well, although not fondly. In fact, as it turns out, his father is my age exactly.

“We need to be friends, now,” he insists with a smile and casual wave of his left hand. “The world is very different than it was during Soviet era.”

“I could not agree more,” I say. “We need to work together to fight terrorism and climate change…the new Cold War.”

On the television, a white man and a black man from opposing teams have collided and are now throwing fists and more than a few expletives at one another.

“Bush not so good,” the young man adds after a time. Like mine, his eyes are glued to the real-time war-on-the-grass-floor. “Obama is better, yes?”

“We’ll have to wait and see,” I admit. “The world has changed a lot.”

“Yes,” the young man sighs, as the fighting competitors are physically pulled apart by exasperated referees. “The world, she is so very different today.”