Tag: safety

JERUSALEM DIARY 2.0 – DAY ONE: LIVING WITH SECURITY -EVERY MINUTE, EVERY DAY

Flowers_and_city_wall_2_9This is the Jerusalem we all love to imagine, and there’s plenty of it that’s just like that.  Usually, that’s where we spend most of our time — biblical Jerusalem.  It’s thrilling.

This time, though, we’re here to study, and for the first time, instead of staying in a hotel, we’re in an apartment in a real neighborhood (Bak’ah for those of you who know it).  We arrived this afternoon after flying from 5 PM Monday DC time through to 2:30 PM Tuesday Jerusalem time.  That’s a total of 14.5 hours with the layover in Frankfurt.  So, exhausted and eager to get to bed, we spent the evening wandering around the neighborhood instead of going immediately to the Old City as we have in the past.

Supermarket_securityWe needed coffee, milk and some other things so we stopped first at the supermarket just blocks from our "house."  But guess what?  Before we could get inside, we were stopped at the door, my bag was searched and we were sort of assessed before entering.  Nicely, matter-of-factly, but for real.  I took this photo of the security guys on the sly, that’s why it’s so blurry.  But there you are.  Need apple juice?  Prepare to have the diaper bag searched.

SaladsRestaurantBags in tow, we went on to dinner at a wonderful grill/salad place.  There are photos of both the salads and the place on the left, but guess what?  Before we could go in we had to check in with the guard at the entrance.  He asked me not to take his picture, but he was there.  Hungry?  Meeting friends for coffee?  Prepare to be checked out not by the cuties at the next table, but by the guard at the door.

Mall_securityWandering around after dinner, we found a sweet coffee place.  Everyone was sitting outside; the traffic was buzzing by beyond the sidewalk, the coffee was great and we were in a great place – living a neighborhood life in another country — one of particular importance to us.  But guess what?  The coffee place is part of a local mall, along with a drugstore and some not-very-expensive (almost cheap) apparel stores.  And guess who were sitting outside the doors, on stools, on the sidewalk?  Yup – security guards.  A quick check of our bags of coffee and bottled water, and of my back pack, and we were good to go.  But there you are.  Going for diapers or hand lotion?  Prepare to be searched at the door.

I’m not writing this to complain.  Today I just felt, in a different way, what it’s like to live here.  Whatever your politics, the idea of a people so under siege that no grocery store or bowling alley or retail mall can exist without security guards checking everyone who enters, is creepy and sad.  I know, I know, a grave portion of our globe is at some kind of risk. And I’d probably react the same way witnessing their struggles.  But this is where I am, this is where I’ve come to study, this is where I look into the eyes of mothers in the baby food aisle and old ladies squeezing tomatoes and crews of students buying up unthinkable quantities of fast food.  And as they move through their lives, relief from their sense of danger, of vulnerability, is possible, sustainable, only until the next time they walk out the front door.  And that’s a hell of a way to live.

OF COURSE IT COULDN’T LAST – RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE WEB

I just spent an hour listening to NYT reporter Kurt Eichenwald on a talk show describing the current state of Internet child pornography.  It’s just so sad. 

I remember as far back as 1998, when I helped launch an Internet safety campaign called America Links Up. We organized teach-ins, a TV program, a family website and a lot of other material to help parents keep their kids safe on line.  I, stupidly, thought people were a little overwrought about the whole thing.  If you were honest with kids, they could be trusted.  [ASIDE: I am, I often observe, a walking demographic… here for the George Lakoff nurturing parent.]  How could we deprive them when the Internet was, as John Perry Barlow said, "the most important discovery since fire?"

I was so besotted that I was incorrigible.  My boss at iVillage, whom I represented at American Links Up, used to call me a Web rat.  But it’s a sign of my eternal naivete that I never thought it would get as bad as it (apparently) is. AND that so many kids would log on when parents weren’t looking and participate. ( If the stories are true, it’s not just toddlers and preteens being exploited, it is also older teens getting sucked in and abused as well. )

We raised our kids in a style very similar to that described by long-time Wired writer Jon Katz, writing as Wired’s Netizen.  In 1996 he wrote a kids’ bill of rights on line – linking web rights to responsibilities met.  I wonder how that would play just ten years later.

In addition, I still don’t understand – when there are so many Law and Order SVU and a dozens of other programs portraying the dangers of these people – why young people would engage in this stuff to begin with.  Either too many kids are too lonely to care or we just aren’t paying enough attention.  Parents have to work and if they want decent housing they often have long commutes.  They need help.

So what do you think?  Is the Web as scary as Eichenwald portrays it?  Is some of it hype?  How do we keep kids safe and still help them to savor the Internet in all its wonders and opportunities?  Holler out some ideas….