Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Zero Tolerance

Logo of the Zero Tolerance Policy at Queen Mary University of London Student Union

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Various countries have laws for zero tolerance of: Using certain pesticides and chemicals, Bullying in the workplace, Dealing Narcotics, Driving while intoxicated, Belonging to gangs, Using weapons and drugs and violence in schools, and increasingly, Discriminating on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation and religion in many settings.

And by international agreement since 2012, all countries have zero-tolerance for genital mutilation: 

The International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is February 6, today. 

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Midweek Motif ~ Zero Tolerance

     Zero-Tolerance is controversial, and hard to enforce.  This is not just because one law doesn't fit everyone, but because laws are applied unevenly.  In the USA, biased law enforcement has led to a racist "school to prison pipeline," for example.

     But when Zero Tolerance becomes a law, its job is to prevent future damage.  Changing behaviors by enforcement now is meant to change attitudes over time.   Does this work? Can it work? Should it work?

     Here are 2 personal examples:  

(1) I recently witnessed a speaker at a library event give contact information for female circumcision, and no one objected.  A lady next to me shushed me when I bristled, and said, "We try to tolerate everybody."  Later I asked the Library Director why he allowed it, and he said he hadn't heard it.  People try not to know, I think.  But how can I be shocked when I didn't follow through myself?    

(2) In my high school English classroom, I had zero tolerance for hate speech of any kind.  To enforce it I had to insist students were in MY space, not public space where free speech is legal.  Imagine the debates!  I had to renew the contract with each new group of students. 

Your Challenge:  Take one tiny piece of this vast topic to illuminate in a new poem using your stories, images, experience, wishes, and potential solutions.  Feel free to focus on FGM.  

From "Crisis Communication," a slide share 
by Dr.Arivalan Ramaiyah Director of Praxis Skills Training and Consultancy

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“We were all involved in the death of John Kennedy. We tolerated hate; we tolerated the sick stimulation of violence in all walks of life; and we tolerated the differential application of law, which said that a man's life was sacred only if we agreed with his views. This may explain the cascading grief that flooded the country in late November. We mourned a man who had become the pride of the nation, but we grieved as well for ourselves because we knew we were sick.”  ― Martin Luther King Jr.

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Goodbye to Tolerance

BY DENISE LEVERTOV

Genial poets, pink-faced   

earnest wits—

you have given the world   

some choice morsels,

gobbets of language presented

as one presents T-bone steak

and Cherries Jubilee.   

Goodbye, goodbye,

                            I don’t care

if I never taste your fine food again,   

neutral fellows, seers of every side.   

Tolerance, what crimes

are committed in your name.

And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread,   

blood donors. Your crumbs

choke me, I would not want

a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped   

by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never   

falter: irresponsive

to nightmare reality.

It is my brothers, my sisters,

whose blood spurts out and stops

forever

because you choose to believe it is not your business.

Goodbye, goodbye,

your poems

shut their little mouths,   

your loaves grow moldy,   

a gulf has split

                     the ground between us,

and you won’t wave, you’re looking

another way.

We shan’t meet again—

unless you leap it, leaving   

behind you the cherished   

worms of your dispassion,   

your pallid ironies,

your jovial, murderous,   

wry-humored balanced judgment,

leap over, un-

balanced? ... then

how our fanatic tears

would flow and mingle   

for joy ..

Farah Gabdon's poem "Woman"

(The Finnish League for Human Rights, Oct. 2016, Helsinki, Finland.)

Tolerance

By Thomas Hardy

'It is a foolish thing,' said I,

'To bear with such, and pass it by;

Yet so I do, I know not why!'

And at each clash I would surmise

That if I had acted otherwise

I might have saved me many sighs.

But now the only happiness

In looking back that I possess —

Whose lack would leave me comfortless —

Is to remember I refrained

From masteries I might have gained,

And for my tolerance was disdained;

For see, a tomb. And if it were

I had bent and broke, I should not dare

To linger in the shadows there.

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.   

(Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Love. )