TC Hate Crime IS Terrorism

There was a hate crime at TC earlier this week. Teachers College - the graduate school of education at Columbia University - is where I took my masters and doctorate. I enjoyed my time there and appreciated what the education I received did for me personally.

To read that some sick soul placed a hangman's noose on the door of an African-American professor makes me physically ill, but not perhaps for just its threat to her.

I have been threatened - explicitly threatened - several times over with death. By an elected official and by an adjoining property owner who land-locked my property, as well as by being assaulted by another adjoining property owner.

I have been stalked, threatened, harassed, had my home broken into and vandalized - I think by local law enforcement as well as private individuals, had my property defaced, vandalized, destroyed and ruined by elected officials and private individuals who were organized and informed me of that, and I was threatened by agents of a law enforcement agency and officers of the court.

In my world, there are no good guys. All of the white hats are bad guys in disguise. I have been threatened with loaded weapons pointed at me, with a post hole digger swung like a baseball bat at my head, and by people shooting weapons behind tree lines, so that I could hear that I was in firing range, but I couldn't see where the firing was coming from.

Neighbors had motion detectors operable so that they were alerted whenever I left my house, entered my farm buildings or moved around my property.

Sometimes they shouted obscenities from the road which was just feet away from my front windows. Sometimes they blasted hate radio so loud that I couldn't hear someone literally speaking into my ear. Sometimes when I called the sheriff's department just to have a record, the responding deputy would allow the tresspassers onto the property, and on one occasion, a deputy pointed out my security camera locations to a terrorist. Sometimes they just tresspassed and swore at me at my own home.

They peered into my windows. They intruded into every aspect of my life.

They followed visitors in their cars and trucks and blocked them in my driveway. They swore at me when I was outside with visitors. They scared everyone, and they scared me, so I stopped having visitors. I didn't want anyone to be hurt or intimidated.

Those who knew - and know - what happened - did nothing.

They terrorized.

They still do.

So learning that terrorists have invaded a school that I found refuge in for its academic rigor and freedom of ideas and expression causes real grief and anger and - terror. For the professor who is the victim of it, and for me, because I feel terror every day. It wakes me every night. I am never free of it and never without it. It has sickened me, and I hope for her sake, that the culprit is found.