Letters from the Front Lines: Vancouver Riot

Ask not what your city can do for you, ask what you can do for your city

 ”Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country”

John F. Kennedy

Great so you say you weren’t quite thinking when you flipped a car, broke a window, beat up some stranger or stole somebody else’s property. Now you realize that the consequences of your actions went far beyond the immediate moment.  You’re asking for forgiveness and begging people to just leave your family, friends and workplace alone.

I’ve got some bad news for you — that’s the same sort of selfish and short-sighted thinking that got you into this mess in the first place.

You’re saying that you’ll do “whatever it takes” to undo what you did… well that’s actually not possible. What you did is done. The dozens, or hundreds, of hours that it’s taken the collective community to clean up after and make up for what you did have been spent. We can’t undo that. It’s a law of physics that I won’t bother to explain.

The question, then is what are you going to do going forward? Not just whining and sniveling and asking to be left alone — What are you going to do for your community? How many hundred hours are you going to spend working to make the world a better place for unknown strangers? What are you going to do, and where are you going to do it?  What are you going to produce for the community that you’ve injured with your actions?

I’m not talking punishment — the courts will take care of that.  I’m talking about taking the opportunity to go beyond being a “feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy,” and looking towards what you have to contribute to the world for the world itself and not to salve your whining conscience or wring some sort of concession from a world angry about your selfishness.

Take on that the world owes you nothing, and understand that there will be people who will hold your incredibly wanton and public actions against you decades down the road.   This isn’t about having something to hold against them.  It’s about giving to the community because you now owe it, and it’s the right thing to do.

— a proud Vancouverite