Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 23:49:17 -0500
Reply-To: The Bus Depot <vanagon@BUSDEPOT.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: The Bus Depot <vanagon@BUSDEPOT.COM>
Subject: Racism and The Bus Depot
In-Reply-To: <Sea2-F29ASWTgZu6WY9000006f4@hotmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> Actually, if his offer of the free Vanagon for a non-Jew is
> still good, someone should go and get the van and the
> donateit for sale by the Anti-Defamation League or
> other such organization. Poetic justice!
Something very much like this happened in my town some years back. The
KKK announced plans to have a big march in Boyertown, PA, about five
miles from my home. The local community was understandably very upset,
but of course couldn't legally stop them because our constitution
protects free speech. So they came up with a novel solution. Working
with the Southern Poverty Law Center, the community started a drive
called Project Lemonade. This turned the KKK march into a Walkathon with
the proceeds supporting organizations like the NAACP, Anti-Defamation
League, and other minority-based charities. For each minute that the KKK
marched, local residents pledged fifty cents or a buck to these
organizations and others like them. So the longer the KKK marched, the
more money they raised for the very people they hated! What a brilliant
idea! This took the wind out of their sails, as you can imagine. The
threatened big KKK march fizzled into a few lone racists who handed out
pamphlets for a short time and went home to wash their sheets.
The Southern Poverty Law Center also runs a program called Teaching
Tolerance, which provides free educational materials and provides an
idea exchange forum for teachers who want to teach acceptance of
difference as part of their lesson plan. The idea is that it is much
easier to teach a child not to be prejudiced, than to change a adult
bigot's mind later in life - in other words, our best chance of
combatting bigotry is to "teach our children well."
When you buy a part from The Bus Depot, a small portion of the profits
go to support this Teaching Tolerance program, as well as Doctors
Without Borders (a nonsectarian group who provide humanitarian medical
aid to civilian victims of war and natural disaster worldwide) and the
Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. This has been the case since
The Bus Depot's inception, and is noted at
http://busdepot.com/help.jsp#DONATIONS. If you saved a lot of money
buying parts from the Depot, consider donating a bit of it to the
charity of your choice as well. Every little bit adds up, and as the
recent events on this list have illustrated, there is still much to be
done.
Sorry for going off-topic, but the last paragraph does kind of
indirectly relate to Vanagon parts. (Okay, it's a stretch.:-) I stayed
silent while the racist was on the list, as he clearly wanted a reaction
and I'll be darned if I was going to give it to him. But I did want to
point out that there are many ways that this sort of thing can be
combatted, and that they really can make a difference.
Now maybe we can go back to talking about Vanagon parts again. I know
I'd like to put this whole thing behind me!
- Ron Salmon
The Bus Depot, Inc.
www.busdepot.com
(215) 234-VWVW
_____________________________________________
Toll-Free for Orders by PART # : 1-866-BUS-DEPOT
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