Sunday, July 5, 2015

4th of July - the sad side

July 4th 2015, around 11:15 PM, we aspirate thanking God that the concert ended. But that is not the end of the story.

At 8:30 AM, the folks of 4th Annual Island Reggae Festival at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds started preparing and testing their drums and their mics, to wake us up with unpleasant headache. Happy 4th of July! 

But real noise kicks off couple hours later. Inside the house, with all double-pane windows shut, we can still hear the music and the singers as if we are next to the stage. And they just go on and on. Till 9 PM, when my toddler's bed-time come, and the headache totally consumed us, I decided to call the police. And here the even more-sad story begins.

In short, we have been calling the police until 10:35 when we got to talk to someone to take in my complaint. A deputy officer calls at 10:55 PM to say they will be done soon, they have a permit and there is nothing much you to do about it! Well, music lasted for 20 minutes after that conversation, and the illegal firework continued in the first few hours of the following AM (they are going on as I write). Many families complain about these illegal fireworks and how they terrify children, pets, and everybody in fact!

How come the Fairgrounds got such a permit to disturb people's enjoyment of their own homes? This sounds like typical under development society behavior. How come police does nothing and how come I got so much hard time to talk to the police? This is exactly the same behavior as the Egyptian police hotline in Egypt during the 2011 revolution, they had no one answering the hot lines!

WOW! What happened to the American society? 10 years ago, I - as an immigrant from Egypt - was super happy with the fact that in USA there is a System and everyone follows the rule, automatically. I mean, without really needing someone, some officer, to ask them to abide by the rules. To me, that was the major difference that makes USA a better place. But since I moved to CA 3 years ago, I have been encountering incidents that keeps raising this question in my heart: why then did I immigrate? In what capacity is America better?

In 4th of July, I would love to bring to American's attention that America is never a better place because of opportunity, American dream, or even nature or natural resources. America has been always a better place because of Americans, and their behavior. Let us fix it!

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