Not too long ago I watched the movie Freedom Writers and truly my eyes were opened. I consider myself to be pretty aware of many of the tragic circumstances in the world, but I was shocked at the words of teens who live in our very own country and describe themselves as living in an "undeclared warzone." Certainly I have read about and even talked about the problem of violence in the US, especially in our cities, in a concerned but rather detached way. The violence in our cities, for the most part, does not directly touch my life. Something about the direct honesty of the teens in this movie profoundly shook me up and made me aware of the the problem in a new way.

The movie is based on the true story of a teacher who inspires her students to write journals about their own experiences of violence and racism, which they ultimately end up publishing as a book, The Freedom Writers Diary. Needless to say, I bought the book after watching the movie. Erin Gruwell was a new teacher in a "rough" school who was shocked to learn that while most of her students had never heard of the holocaust, the majority of them had experienced being shot or having someone shoot at them. In an environment that was deeply divided between racial gangs, she set out to teach them the dangers of intolerance by helping them to understand the holocaust through the eyes of another teenager, Anne Frank. Inspired by Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic (Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo), the students realized that by telling their own stories, they could make an impact on the world. In one passage a student tells of getting jumped on the first day of school. She goes on to explain to the reader that the schools are just like the city:

All of them are divided into separate sections, depending on race. On the streets, you kick it in different 'hoods, depending on your race, or where you're from. And at school, we separate ourselves from people who are different from us. That's just the way it is, and we all respect that. So when the Asians started trying to claim parts of the 'hood, we had to set them straight. . . . Latinos killing Asians. Asians killing Latinos. They declared war on the wrong people. Now it all comes down to what you look like. If you look Asian or Latino, you're going to get blasted on or at least jumped. The war has been declared, now it's a fight for power, money, and territory; we are killing each other over race, pride, and respect (10).

In writing about the experience of losing a friend, another of the students says:

I've lost many friends, friends who have died in an undeclared war. A war that has been here for years, but has never been recognized. A war between color and race. A war that will never end. A war that has left family and friends crying for loved ones who have perished. To society, they're just another dead person on the street corner; just another statistic. But to the mothers of all those other statistics, they're more than simple numbers. They represent lives cut short, like more cut flowers. Like the ones placed on their graves (16).

The students write of their experiences of sexual and physical abuse, of being "jumped" into the gang, of buying a gun and shooting someone for the first time, of addiction to drugs, of being evicted from their homes, of being in prison, of not thinking about graduation because they do not know if they will even still be alive then. I realized that I listen to stories on NPR everyday about people living in Iraq in fear for their lives, afraid to walk down their streets, and I fail to have an awareness that people in my own country live in the same kind of pervasive violence and fear.

The story has a "resurrection" ending in that these students did survive. They did live and graduate and even went on to college because someone took the time and effort to believe in them, to invest in them, and to challenge them. Back in 1979 our bishops wrote Brothers and Sisters to Us, a pastoral letter on racism. In it they state:

In response to this mood, we wish to call attention to the persistent presence of racism and in particular to the relationship between racial and economic justice. Racism and economic oppression are distinct but interrelated forces which dehumanize our society. Movement toward authentic justice demands a simultaneous attack on both evils. . . . Major segments of the population are being pushed to the margins of society in our nation. As economic pressures tighten, those people who are often black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian -- and always poor -- slip further into the unending cycle of poverty, deprivation, ignorance, disease, and crime. Racial identity is for them an iron curtain barring the way to a decent life and livelihood.

The bishops call all of us to accountability:

Today in our country men, women, and children are being denied opportunities for full participation and advancement in our society because of their race. The educational, legal, and financial systems, along with other structures and sectors of our society, impede people's progress and narrow their access because they are black, Hispanic, Native American or Asian. The structures of our society are subtly racist, for these structures reflect the values which society upholds. They are geared to the success of the majority and the failure of the minority. Members of both groups give unwitting approval by accepting things as they are. Perhaps no single individual is to blame. The sinfulness is often anonymous but nonetheless real. The sin is social in nature in that each of us, in varying degrees, is responsible. All of us in some measure are accomplices. As our recent pastoral letter on moral values states: "The absence of personal fault for an evil does not absolve one of all responsibility. We must seek to resist and undo injustices we have not ceased, least we become bystanders who tacitly endorse evil and so share in guilt in it."(8)

It is sad to see that after almost 30 years we are still facing the same problems. This past September Catholic Charities published a report entitled, "Poverty and Racism: Overlapping Threats to the Common Good." The report concludes:

What motivates our concern about racism is our faith conviction that this is a “radical evil” which is not only absolutely incompatible with Christian faith and belief, but also a dire threat to our nation’s future. A new way of understanding what it means to be “American,” and who is included in that self-understanding, is urgently needed for both the integrity of our faith and our survival as a nation. Given the momentous shift occurring in our racial demographics, tolerating racial injustice and economic deprivation are realities we can no longer afford to indulge. We offer to both our church and society the following affirmations and convictions:
• Poverty and racial injustice are deeply intertwined and demand a simultaneous engagement if effective progress is to be made against either.
• Poverty and racial injustice are moral scandals that betray our national ideals of “liberty and justice for all.”
• Poverty and racial injustice are the results of human agency. They need not exist. This means that social reality can be other than the way it is. “Social life is created by human beings, by human choices and decisions. This means that human beings can change things. And therein lies the hope (Massingale, "About Katrina," 61).”