* * *
On the morning of his meeting with the black ministers, Eduardo and I drove out a few hours early to the site in Brooklyn and walked it through once again. We brought other volunteers to help us plan the movement of the principals on the street, the expected crowd, all the starts and stops where the press would have obvious positions for video. We held the procession. Janice reminded us that everything had to be perfect. She was trusting us. She and Sherrie were too busy dealing with the mayor, and would only arrive with him.
De Roos was on the offensive again, trying to spoil Kwang’s show with the same questions about his role in the boycotts, suggesting that he was obstructing the efforts of the police and community groups. His hard line was also meant to draw attention from the more pointed talk of his alleged adultery with a woman whose name was now public, rumors he was saying were the work of certain political opportunists. Janice wasn’t saying anything to anyone. She’d look at me hard if the subject came up in the office and casually draw a finger across her throat. The mayor would then want to talk about John Kwang and his methods of registering voters, the excessive use of street money and underage volunteers.
“This isn’t the Third World,” De Roos said on the news, standing in the heart of downtown Flushing. “Americans make up their own minds.”
When Kwang’s car arrived he got out and we immediately led him up the steps, inside the church. There would be a closed meeting between Kwang and the church leaders for the first hour, and then they would all speak before a gathering outside. The private talk would actually be more a negotiation, Janice told me the week before, about what everyone would be saying before the cameras. Sherrie would be sitting in then, though she was to leave unseen afterward, before they all stepped outside. Janice had convinced them both that having Sherrie in the shots would just confuse the viewers; they’d think she was his wife, or his girlfriend, and only make the story of the day more difficult to tell.
I waited in my position. I was nervous. I don’t know why. The crowd was much larger than we’d expected, an even mix of Koreans, blacks, Hispanics. The press was there in force, but I sensed that they understood, too, that the occasion wasn’t particularly momentous or crucial to the disposition of actual events, the real violence and tension, even if they would portray it as such on the evening programs.
I suppose I wanted to watch him work the crowd. I wanted to take in his every move among the people, to witness the telling presence that I’d seen glimpses of but on a much smaller scale, at the office, on building stoops, inside restaurants. I didn’t know if he could tread with the same proportion here.
When they came out, he stood on the rise of the church steps among the four enrobed ministers. He didn’t look nervous. A line of microphones was set up. Eduardo and I were on either side of the group, a few steps down, half-facing the crowd. The men were all smiling and shaking hands with each other. The lead minister, the Reverend Benjamin Shavers, hushed the crowd. He spoke for a few minutes about the tragedy of strife between the communities. The reverend then asked John Kwang to speak.
John stepped forward into the tightening space of the steps. The sky was clear. He wore a dark wool topcoat over his suit and white shirt and tie. He held no speaking notes or cards.
“My friends,” he said, his accents on the syllables of his words unlikely, melodic. “I have something to tell you today. An incredible bit of news. Black and Korean children, as some in this city would have you believe, aren’t yet boycotting one another’s corner lemonade stands.”
There was scattered laughter in the throng.
“It’s true, it’s true,” he answered. “I have this from reliable sources. You know how my people have been roaming the boroughs.”
“Where are the mayor’s people?” a voice yelled from the back. I thought it sounded like Janice’s.
“Oh please, please,” Kwang pleaded in her direction. “Let us show compassion for the mayor’s position in this. He just found out what’s on this side of the East River.”
A chorus of cheers went up. The crowd had been steadily growing and was now spilling back out into the street. Police were setting up barricades blocking one whole lane of cars.
“But let us not think about the mayor today. Let us not think about the inaction of his administration in the face of what he says is a ‘touchy situation.’ When he casually tells the newspapers that ‘it’s getting wild out there in Queens and Brooklyn,’ let’s not simply nod and agree. Let’s not accept that kind of imagery. Let’s think instead of what we have to bear together.
“A young black mother of two, Saranda Harlans, is dead. Shot in the back by a Korean shopkeeper. Charles Kim, a Korean American college student, is also dead. He was overcome by fumes trying to save merchandise in the firebombed store of his family. I was in the hospital room when he died. I attended Miss Harlans’ funeral. And I say that though they may lie beneath the earth, they are not buried.
“So let’s think together in a different way. Today, here, now. Let us think that for the moment it is not a Korean problem. That it is not a black problem or a brown and yellow problem, that it is not a problem of our peoples, that it is not even ultimately a problem of our mistrust or our ignorance. Let us think it is the problem of a self-hate.
“Yes,” he said, starting to sing the words. “Let us think that. Think of this, my friends: when a Korean merchant haunts an old black gentleman strolling through the aisles of his grocery store, does he hold even the smallest hope that the man will not steal from him? Or when a group of black girls takes turns spitting in the face and hair of the new student from Korea, as happened to my friend’s daughter, whose muck of hate do they ball up on their tongues? Who is the girl the girls are seeing? Who is the man who appears to be stealing? Who are they, those who know no justice, no fairness; do you know them? Are they familiar?”
There were random calls from the crowd. Then a man heckled something but was immediately shouted down. There was a brief scuffle and the heckler cursed them and slipped away.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. Let us think differently today. The problem is our acceptance of what we loathe and fear in ourselves. Not in the other, not in the person standing next to you, not in the one living outside in this your street, in this your city, not in the one who drives your bus or who mops the floors of your child’s school, not in the one who cleans your shirts and presses your suits, not in the one who sells books and watches on the corner. No! No, no!”
He started pointing, gesturing about the crowd, picking out people. “This person, this person, she, that person, he, that person, they, those, them, they’re like us, they are us, they’re just like you! They want to live with dignity and respect! They want a fair day of work. They want a chance to own something for themselves, be it a store or a cart. They want to show compassion to the less fortunate. They want happiness for their children. They want enough heat in the winter so they can sleep, they want a clean park in the summer so they can play. They want to love like sweet life this city in which they live, not just to exist, not just to get by, not just to survive this day and go home tonight and tend fresh wounds. Think of yourself, think of your close ones, whom no one else loves, and then you will be thinking of them, whom you believe to be the other, the enemy, the cause of the problems in your life. Those who are a different dark color. Who may seem strange. Who cannot speak your language just yet. Who cannot seem to understand the first thing about who you are. Who must certainly hate you, you are thinking, because of the constant frustration of your own heart turning hard against them.