<div dir="ltr">This is a letter to the editor about an incident that happened to my family on a Harwich beach. I would appreciate it if you would print it. <div><br><div>Sincerely, </div><div>Marilyn Schlansky</div><div><br></div><div>28 Glenwood Drive</div><div>Harwich, MA 02645</div><div>774-237-0698</div><div><a href="mailto:schlansky2@gmail.com">schlansky2@gmail.com</a></div></div><div><br></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal">July 3, 2017</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Letter to the Editor</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Hatred Comes to Harwich”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s taken me a week to write this letter because I wanted
to be very clear about the facts.
My husband and I live year round in Harwich, and delight in having our
children and grandchildren come to visit, as so many of us do. I want to tell you about an ugly
incident that happened to us at the lakeside beach on Cahoon Road off Route 137
on June 26th. To set the scene let
me introduce the cast of characters.
There are myself and my husband, typical grey-haired retirees; my son,
daughter-in-law, and toddler daughter (all white); my daughter, her Guyanese
American husband, (brown), and their two teenage daughters, (tan, and light
brown respectively). We set our
chairs up in the shade about 50 feet from the lakeshore, and my husband, myself,
the baby and her parents, went down to the water. My daughter and family were chatting quietly in the
shade. Also on the beach near us,
a Latina woman and her two small boys, not related, but also brown. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">An elderly lady and her husband, who wore a red Trump hat,
sat about 25 feet behind us. This
elderly lady came up to my 16 year old granddaughter and said she was angry
that she sat in front of her, albeit 25 feet away. My son-in-law politely apologized and offered to have his
daughter move. The woman did not
think this was acceptable. This
woman said, and I quote my daughter, “I don’t know how they do things where you
come from, but we don’t do that here”.
My son-in-law again offered to have his daughter move, but the woman
just repeated her comment. My
daughter asked her what she meant by this, and told her if she didn’t want the
girl to move than to leave them alone, and to stop making racist remarks. We had come up from the water by now to
find our daughter in tears but reluctant to tell us the reason.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A few days later my daughter wrote about the incident on
Facebook. I shared it with my
Facebook friends. I immediately
had offers of a posse to go down to the beach and tell these folks a thing or two. And the point is, these loyal
supporters include two Episcopal priests, a Catholic priest, and people of
Protestant, Jewish, Catholic, and Buddhist persuasions. This is what I know about Harwich. This welcoming, diverse town is where I
live. Now I don’t know if these
Trump hat wearing people lived here, were summer visitors, rented, or
what. But I do know what proud,
patriotic, generous and compassionate people my daughter and her family are. They are known among their friends and
ours for charities they support, the people they help, the kindness they show.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Now we all know how Cape businesses depend on this image of
small-town, old-fashioned, American fun during the summer. This is a place where people bring
their kids to make family memories, as my husband and I did years ago. This is a place where restaurants, ice
cream parlors, hometown baseball games, beaches and boatrides thrive because
people, all kinds of people, feel welcome and at home here. But the newspapers back in May were full of
stories about how these businesses were impacted by the loss of seasonal
workers, some who had been coming for years, who all of a sudden couldn’t get
visas. There are dozens of summer
jobs going unfulfilled and this translates to the bottom line of someone who lives and works here. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The cover of this week’s New Yorker magazine depicts a young
black woman in a blue bathing suit covered in white stars holding a red and
white striped beach ball. Now
which image do you want for Harwich?
This one? Or a guy in a
Trump hat ready to decide who gets to be on the beach and who doesn’t? Let’s keep hatred out of Harwich and
off the Cape. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sincerely,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Marilyn Schlansky</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Harwich</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Marilyn Schlansky</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">28 Glenwood Drive</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Harwich, MA 02645</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">774-237-0698</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="mailto:schlansky2@gmail.com">schlansky2@gmail.com</a></p>
</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div>