Lansing - Concerns of how communities should react to the recent tragedy in New York City and Washington were posed to a 12-person panel at Lansing City Hall on Sunday afternoon.
The forum began with Human Relations and Community Services Director Genice Rhodes-Reed telling the audience about her opinion on the attacks.
“Our community is in pain. We must have unity in our community,” Rhodes-Reed said. “I am concerned about retaliation on Arab ethic groups because of the magnitude of this crisis.”
MSU’s Muslim Students’ Association was also at the forum to express feeling about being targeted with backlash from other ethnic groups.
“The forum is great because this is an open discussion with representatives from many different organizations” said Sameer Ashaibi, manufacturing engineering and management junior and a member of the association. “We had several people contact us to see how we feel about the incident last week. We just wanted to step up and say to everyone we’re Americans and this event was tragic for us also.”
Several people expressed sorrow at the forum for the lives lost.
“This is such a big blow to every culture, everyone is affected by what has happened,” Ashaibi said. “I do not think we need to go to war, the only thing that will happen is more innocent lives will be lost.”
Members of such organizations as the American Red Cross, the Lansing branch of the NAACP, and the Lansing Police Department were also in attendance.
“I felt it is important to be here, I need to be aware of our community’s concerns,” said Steve Luciando, a Lansing police officer. “There is certainly some anger about this situation, we have had calls and comments coming but nothing major has occurred.”
Ethic intimidation was also a concern during the discussion as people from the Japanese community and Arabic community expressed feelings of fear for themselves and their relatives.
“Our police department has zero tolerance for ethic intimidation, and we are very conscious about the Arab Americans’ and the community’s feelings,” Luciando said.
Carrie Owens, a retired professor at Oakland University, said she was glad she was given an opportunity to express her feelings.
“I cried for all those innocent people that lost their lives then and the ones who have lost their lives recently,” said the Haslett resident, who has lived through both world wars, the Vietnam War and the Gulf War.
