I was watching Neighborhood Wars, which is a program in a “list format” that documents interpersonal stuff that happens in different communities. It seems in every episode there’s at least one thing about the community coming together for some cause, such as everyone coming together to defend an immigrant whose lemonade stand got attacked, or everyone coming together to investigate whether a boy actually committed a certain act of assault that he was accused of (haven’t a number of us been in that situation). Think back to the original Spiderman movie when the citizens of New York City started throwing stuff at the Green Goblin and saying “you mess with Spidey, you mess with New York!”
While this was on, a Québécois acquaintance that was visiting my home for some casual time lamented “hélas, cela n’arriverait jamais ici” (roughly “if only that happened here”), probably unaware that the community once drove someone out of town who was trying to incite sentiment and came by to give me a hard time personally (someone I am known here as having talked both about and toward before; their clique was last seen giving a “final awareness message” about me). All despite the fact the only reason I myself barely escape having a “weird flatlander” reputation to this very exclusive community is due to my home once belonging to my grandfather, not helped by being a French Polynesian descendant.
Does your hometown community have any moments like this?
The isolated, rural place I grew up did something like that. There was a young guy who had grown up here, but was born in Asia. I can’t remember the exact details, but basically he got a criminal record for something (although it was commonly believed that he’d actually taken the blame for something he hadn’t done to protect his girlfriends brother who was on probation or something) and because of some recent anti-immigration policies from central government, he was going to be deported back to Thailand (or wherever) even though he didn’t speak the language and hadn’t been there since he was a baby.
The local community were outraged and campaigned against it, saying he was a valued and responsible member of their community, then when immigration officers were sent they protested and prevented them from taking him. No idea how they came up with a legal justification in the end, but he was allowed to stay. And it certainly made me respect the place more.