From Dinosaurs to Daily Life in the USA

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I try to learn about countries by walking their streets. That’s why on Monday morning, 5 October, I hit the streets of New York. How early do people wake up in a city that never sleeps? What is rush hour like?

On this day, I noticed children going to school. A man walked by with a child perched on his neck, holding his head. I thought this looked dangerous. Another man sang loudly, running with a child beside him. A woman dashed across the road with two kids trying to catch a bus. And then there was a kindergarten kid crying as the mother dragged him to school. Yes, education is important, but these kids don’t understand that yet.

Three days later, news I dread from ‘God’s own country’ started spreading. There was a shooting in the Marble Hill area of New York City. This time, it was not a disturbed person or the police. The shooters were the new kids on the block, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. They surrounded the car of 28-year-old Dominican migrant, Oscar Belgal, who had his five-year-old son with him. ICE agents fired at least seven shots into the car. Belgal was hit in the neck and taken away. Fortunately, the boy was not hurt.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani called President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to negotiate for Belgal’s release. When that failed, he held a press conference demanding that ICE stop its enforcement actions in the city because they make it less safe. He made a poetic demand: “This city wants ICE out. We want ICE out of our city, ICE out of our schools, ICE out of our hospitals, ICE out of our streets, ICE away from our kids.”

The Department of Homeland Security claimed it was a targeted enforcement operation during which, “the criminal illegal alien was injured.” The city erupted in anger, and two days of protests followed. People were not just angry at the Trump administration, but also at Mamdani because some protesters believed the New York Police Department (NYPD), which he oversees, might have helped ICE in the operation. Mamdani wisely ordered an investigation into possible NYPD cooperation.

I thought a lot about American life and humanity. Where are we coming from, and where are we headed? I went to the American Museum of Natural History. Maybe it would provide some answers. The museum is no stranger to controversy. One case was about the bronze statue of former President Theodore Roosevelt. It showed him on horseback, flanked by a walking Indigenous American and an African American. Some argued that it showed a White man in a position of power, with the Indigenous and the African as helpers. Activists called this a sign of internal colonialism. The protests spread nationwide, and in June 2021, the city Public Design Commission voted to remove the statue, which had been unveiled in 1940.

I was mainly interested in the dinosaurs. These creatures lived on earth for 245 million years. There is a 65-million-year gap between their extinction and the arrival of humans. This means they existed before we did. They lived long before Adam was created and even before the genetic changes that brought Eve. Dinosaurs seemed better suited to the earth than we are. For example, their digestive system allowed them to eat all sorts of things, including pebbles. We have two sets of teeth, but dinosaurs had around 65 teeth and could replace them when one broke or wore down. Duck-billed dinosaurs, for instance, used up to 10,000 teeth in their lifetime. What can we learn from these creatures that measured one to forty meters long? Their extinction came from explosions that covered the earth, blocking sunlight for months or years, making life nearly impossible. The good news is we have the ability to cause explosions that could lead to our extinction too.

I walked through the section on the origins of humanity. I saw the Neanderthals, early humans who went extinct. In our world after the dinosaurs, elephants are the largest land animals. I went to their section in the museum; these giant creatures amazed me. The largest known weighed 12.24 tonnes and was 3.96 meters tall, found on 7 November 1974 in Angola. I looked at them and other animals like gorillas, bears, and lions and thought our hunting nature might lead to their extinction like the dinosaurs. The displays showed these animals in their natural habitats.

Then, I entered another controversial area; the North West Coast Hall dedicated to Indigenous Indian life and culture. This included regalia for chiefs, spirits, and forms of government where hierarchy depended on how much a person gave away, not wealth. The hall was filled with beautiful art and Ocean-going canoes. Some carvings were over seven meters high and made from huge trees, just like the canoes that could carry many people.

The controversy comes from Indigenous people who feel they should not be displayed in a natural history museum since they are not animals. But a scholar, Morgan Guerin, defended the exhibition. He wrote in part of the hall: “There is a lot of the ancestors’ souls within these pieces.”

There wasn’t much on Europe, so I was told to go to ‘The Met’ on 1000 Fifth Avenue, which has over 5,000 years of art from various parts of the world. The next day, I was there, exploring Roman, Greek, and African art that showed humanity began in Africa, just like history.

Outside ‘The Met’, there were crowds, some sitting on steps leading into the museum. As usual, while in New York, I visited Harlem. There was a large statue of Frederick Douglass, the African American who escaped from slavery to become a great abolitionist and speaker. He once said: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” I saw the statue of Harriet Tubman, who helped free slaves. For her, it was “liberty or death.” I stopped at an African restaurant almost opposite the Malcolm X Mosque, beside the boulevard named after him. Brother Malcolm often said we must be freed: “By Any Means Necessary.”

In the same way, we must protect people from predators and save humanity from a possible dinosaur-like extinction by any means necessary.