We have been going to the Walmart in Foley on Black Friday for the last three or four years. We have always found it a pleasant, safe, civil, even enjoyable experience.

As we waited for the sale items to be unwrapped in the midnight hour, people were friendly, sociable and pleasant. When we lined up for a limited number of items, the clerks handed out numbers to the people. When numbers had been handed out that covered their inventory of particular items on sale, they told the rest that they need not wait in line.

Oh, there were a few who tried to cut the lines. However when they were called on it they sheepishly returned to the end of the line.

In those past years we watched the news. We saw the craziness and violence at other stores in other cities. We were thankful that we didn’t live in such barbaric places.

This year the picture changed entirely. THEY WERE US!! We saw a young girl trampled in the rush to get a couple of video games. A handicapped man in a motorized cart was hit over the head, and a few towels were snatched from his hands. There was pushing and shoving. There was rudeness, yelling, anger, hostility, violence, all sorts of barbaric behavior.

Throughout the world people are taking to the streets to gain the freedom so long denied them. They are met with violence from those that rule them.

People all over this country, all over the world, are peacefully occupying public spaces to demand justice and opportunity — the promise of America. They are met with violence by the very government, the very authorities that are charged with their protection.

Yet last week we saw tens of thousands of Americans commit violence against one another. Hundreds of Alabamans, Foleyites, attacked one another. FOR A $2 WAFFLE IRON?

Is this the new motto for America: “Shop ‘til you drop, or we dropkick you?”

Economic stimulus aside, is this really the community we want to be? Is this the nation we have become?

Paul Diamond

Foley