Ugly Protests an Odd Way to Show How Nice U.S. Is

Next month, it will be 20 years since the city of Miami nearly came apart at the seams. Since sniper fire and arson and looting broke out all over town. Since 300 state troopers, 1,100 National Guard troops, four helicopters and an armored personnel carrier had to be called in to keep Miami calm.

There’d been an incident--Southern Californians can relate--with four police officers accused of beating a 33-year-old insurance executive named Arthur McDuffie to death. When they were judged not guilty, a full-scale riot erupted May 17, 1980, resulting in more than a dozen deaths and hundreds of injuries. Schools had to be closed, liquor sales suspended and a dusk-to-dawn curfew enforced.

It was a very bad time for South Florida, and for the many who preferred living there to where they had previously lived.

A scary, panic-in-the-street experience, it gave people in Miami grave concerns--first after McDuffie’s death and then again after the verdict--over just how safe a place their city was to live.

So what’s the story in Miami, 20 years later?

Sympathizers for 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez now have the entire city on pins and needles, forming human barricades at Elian’s temporary home and staging ugly, angry demonstrations outside the U.S. attorney general’s Miami home--and why?

To prove to Elian and everyone else how much better life in Miami is.

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“Let the boy stay!” chanted protesters by the hundreds outside great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez’s house Thursday, the day Elian’s father came to the United States to try to get his boy back.

“Let him stay!” wrote a Beverly Hills songwriter, who feels so strongly about Elian being better off in Florida than being with his daddy that he put it in a song.

We enjoy many freedoms here in the United States, including, apparently, the freedom to kidnap a man’s kid if we don’t like where the man is from.

We have people who would rather keep a kid hostage than return him to a place where he wouldn’t be free.

We have government officials in Florida who mock a father who hasn’t been able to see his child since November by making fun of the way this man reads his views off a prepared statement, as if an unprepared speech would prove him a more natural father.

We see interviews with 15-year-old boys, standing in protest outside great-uncle Lazaro’s residence, saying, “We’re not going to let them just take him,” as Elian plays in the yard on a little yellow slide.

We see meddlesome strangers, who are clueless as to what kind of father Juan Miguel Gonzalez is, automatically side with his late wife, a woman who drowned and who just as easily could have caused Elian to drown with her.

We see supporters bring a 5 1/2-foot cross of Jesus to the little boy’s current residence, to pray for Elian to stay . . . as if Jesus wouldn’t want a son to honor his father.

We see 100 or so Cuban exiles standing outside Janet Reno’s family home, portraying the U.S. attorney general as a devil with horns . . . because she has the satanic idea that a boy should be raised by a parent, not an uncle.

Elian’s father arrived in Washington with his new wife and son--”the true family of Elian,” as he rightfully called them--and wondered how some Americans could be so positive that a boy would be happier without his father, stepmother and baby brother.

“He witnessed the disappearance of his mother and he miraculously survived a shipwreck,” Juan Miguel Gonzalez said. “Wasn’t that enough for a 5-year-old?”

Evidently not, because all those Uncle-Knows-Best supporters forming a human chain around the house where Elian is staying must feel that they’re justified in thinking that if Elian’s father loves him so much, then maybe he ought to risk drowning and sail a boat to Florida too.

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A song, “Let Him Stay,” available on CD, has been composed by Jim White of Beverly Hills, who is described as a relative of the Four Tops. Its chorus goes:

Let him stay, so we can see him smile.

Let him stay, and live happy for a while.

Let him stay, and we welcome too his dad.

Let him stay, to return him would be sad.

No, let him go, so his dad and brother and friends from school can see him smile. Let him go, to live with his real family for a while.

The way it’s escalating, some people in Miami might fight or riot or defy authority or do whatever’s necessary to keep a child from his dad, so they can teach Elian Gonzalez what a wonderful place this is to live.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: [email protected]