NOW IS THE TIME FOR US TO STOP BEING PASSIVE ABOUT SOCIETAL VIOLENCE.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

``On the very day these day camp kids were coming to the Museum of Tolerance to learn about man's inhumanity, man's inhumanity was making a stop at their day camp center.'' - Rabbi Marvin Hier, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance.

They're our kids, living on our streets. That makes it our fight.

This story isn't coming at us from a satellite feed. It's happened right here in our own back yard.

A gunman walks into the Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, and he opens fire on some little kids going to summer camp there.

How are we supposed to react to this? With shock and anger? Sure. With sympathy for the victims and their parents? Absolutely.

But then what? What are we supposed to do next?

For starters, we can get out of the bleachers, says Rabbi Marvin Hier, who deals with the scars of hate every day as head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance.

It was here, at the West Los Angeles museum Tuesday, that many of the older day campers from the North Valley Jewish Community Center were listening to the rabbi talk about tolerance and intolerance in society - while at their day-camp center a gunman with an Uzi was wreaking havoc.

``I think we need to face the fact that the threshold of violence has changed in America,'' Hier said Tuesday afternoon.

``We always assumed schools, synagogues and churches didn't need protection, but now they do because the threshold is higher.

``People can't sit in the bleachers and watch the hate and violence go by, hoping it never hits close to home and touches them. It will. It has.''

For every act of hate and violence, a hundred, a thousand people have to come forward with acts of kindness and goodness, to show our kids the other side,

Hier says.

The other side is us, sitting up in the bleachers for way too long, hoping the violence will just go away.

``Just like these haters take risks, good people have to take risks, too,'' Hier says. ``They have to step forward and say it's wrong for a person like this to be able to get his hands on an Uzi so he can walk into a day-care center and shoot little kids.

``We can't remain indifferent any longer. We have to show our kids what responsibility means. If there are guns being used to tear down our schools, synagogues and churches, we have to stop them.

``We can't say we haven't been warned,'' Hier said. ``There have been ample warnings the last year and a half.

``We can't be afraid to express ourselves whenever we see hatred, and people being picked on or discriminated against,'' he said.

``It's not something that can be swept under the carpet. The threshold of violence has just become too high and come too close to home.''

These are our kids, living on our streets. That makes it our fight.

Dennis McCarthy's column appears Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday.