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Last Revised: Dec. 1993

SO I GREW TWO VOICES

The Polly Klaas Phenomenon:

The Loss of White Innocence

by MARY MOORE

There is nothing more horrible than the suffering of a child! No child should suffer for any reason but it's time that what is being said privately about some aspects of the Polly Klass phenomenon be put out publicly and I'm afraid the insulated and protected aren't going to want to hear it.

I'm real concerned about the "new spirit in the community" charging after the simplistic "three strikes and you're out" non solution to the collective sickness of this culture. Look around you, those of you who have just "lost your innocence"!! Are you at all familiar with what children endure in those communities that lost their innocence a long time ago, if indeed they ever had it?

Most of you don't think twice about supporting a system that abuses children daily for PROFIT! What about the children who die of cancer or are born with birth defects in MacFarland, Calif. and other farmworker communities where pesticides have been taking their toll for years and few people cared to look. What about the children living in "non-innocent" communities where the government simply ignores if not encourages hard drugs and drivebys are a common occurrence and the nice white liberals in the suburbs shudder and breathe their sighs of relief that their communities are "safe". What about the toxic racism involved in the disproportunate amount of poisons stored, spilled and released in communities of color?

Those are just a few examples!! There are many forms of child abuse and none are O.K. but those that exist because of corporate/government complicity to the profit bottom line are much more pervasive than stranger abductions or even family/friend abuse. These forms of child abuse do exist daily and are seldom noted much less acted upon by people in the "safe" communities.

There is no question that Polly brought the Petaluma community together in an unprecedented way and that is good but it's shortsighted to think that more and stronger prisons will solve anything. Repression by itself has never solved anything and it never will. It scares me when I see both people and politicians focusing on individual sickos as the problem while ignoring the systemic abuse that effects millions of the worlds children all in the name of making a buck.

This "new spirit in the community" can choose to use the momentum generated by our nightmare to solve the problem at its roots with solutions that would include understanding and overcoming the legacy of racism, classism and power over. True answers won't come all packaged in catchy but simplistic phrases.

Polly Klaas is not "America's Child". America's child comes with many and varied faces and there has been little outrage when those faces are black or brown. As long as the abuse is built into the system and the privileged and safe don't have to look at it we'll continue to have what we have now!!

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