The Chicago tribune reports on the addition of a Gandhi statue to the Chicago suburb of Skokie (where this blogger was born). In addition to simply discussing the statue they also discuss the demographics of the suburb:
Once an icon of the Jewish community, Skokie since the 1980s has become something of a north-suburban United Nations, where 80 languages are spoken in the homes of its public school students. In May, the annual Festival of Cultures drew an estimated 25,000 visitors.
And three years after Kamaria and a citizens group proposed the idea, Skokie again celebrated its rich cultural diversity by dedicating an 8-foot-tall statue of Gandhi on Saturday, the 135th anniversary of his birth.
Of course the other ethnic communities there want statues of their heroes as well:
So far, at least three groups—representing Skokie’s Korean, Filipino and Swedish ethnic communities—are toying with the idea.
“Who knows? Maybe we could find a great figure of sports,” said Jin Lee, director of the Keumsil Cultural Society, which promotes Korean-American culture. “Or [it might be] best to have a scholarly figure who did great deeds for the country.”
Might this great gesture honoring Gandhi eventually stir up a controversy in the community? At least some local politicians think so:
Michael Gelder warned fellow members on the Skokie board of trustees to consider “the quagmire we might be creating for ourselves.”
Although it might be easy for Skokie residents to agree on the worthiness of someone like Gandhi, Gelder said recently, “it strikes me that there’s very little consensus among the various ethnic groups or nationalities about [what constitutes] a great leader.”
“… One person’s liberator is another’s terrorist,” Gelder said.
I really loathe how people now so casually throw the “T-word” into every situation.
