My two-cents worth and then some. An online journal by LP Brown.

Posts Tagged ‘Black Lives Matter’

Move Your Boat!!!

by on ·Opinion, Race Matters, The Way I See It

Beware when a black woman removes her earrings, but when a brother snatches off his cap, you’d better back your a** up because the brother ain’t backing down.

I made that jovial remark about the riverfront dock brawl that occurred on Saturday, August 5, in Montgomery, Alabama. I posted it in jest as a comment on a few Facebook pages, including my own. Although many folks recognized the humor in my remark and responded with a smiling emoji, at least one of my socially conscious friends didn’t. Instead, he asked me, “Why do you people make everything about race? Why couldn’t it just be two men fighting over a disagreement?

I said, “Did we see the same thing, two men merely disagreeing, or was one man attacking and the other defending himself?”

“Something like that,” he said.

Then, I asked, ” When are you going to wake up and smell the coffee, and what will it take?”

This friend  (I’ll call him Urkel, though Mr. Different Strokes might be more suitable) sometimes agitates me. And although our occasional conversations are usually congenial, discussions about racial issues are a hot potato that we often toss back and forth, disagreeing and sometimes being disagreeable until we abruptly drop the subject.

I’ve known Urkel for a while, and he told me he usually doesn’t discuss racial issues with black people even when asked his opinion because it often leads to a nasty argument. He considers that topic, along with religion and politics, off limits. Frankly, I wonder if he was born with (or sometime during his life developed) a black gene deficiency because, contrary to what some people reading this might think, he is a black man. His deep walnut complexion and vernacular would not allow him to pass for white if he wanted to. Based on our conversations, and though he has never admitted it, I think he wishes he could pass. His self-loathing is apparent, but not to him.

He has a distorted tendency to fault the black man for most of his problems. For instance, we’ve had heated debates over race-related events, including the murders of George Floyd, Philando Castile, and the “alledged” suicide of Sanda Bland. Aside from his warped view of reality, Urkel is kind and level-headed. 

(Sorry about that, Urkel. I couldn’t stifle the laugh.)

Although honest communication is critical to understanding another person’s perspective, sometimes one can’t help but wonder if the person they are conversing with is not only uninformed and misinformed but blind, deaf, and dumb. Or perhaps they live in an alternate universe.

Regarding Urkel’s question about why I read race into everything, I told him it’s not true. However, the past is always present; I call it as I see it. In the riverfront dock incident, this armchair quarter-back saw a white man charging and assaulting a black man because his pride would not let him be seen as subservient by adhering to the directive of a black man.

And at the risk of sounding condescending, I’ll add that I have an amicable relationship with non-racist white friends throughout the country whom I’ve known and cared about for years.

I don’t condone violence, but black people are sick and tired of being disrespected. We are not our ancestors. I think activist groups like Black Lives Matter have clarified that. The men who came to the rescue of the dock captain, including the guy who jumped off the boat and swam to the dock, embody the words of Maya Angelo, “I am the hope and the dream of the slave.”

Despite how often the media, TV programs, and movies portray black people, many of us are not violent. Many friends and acquaintances have told me their parents raised them as I was raised:  you don’t start a fight, but you don’t run away from one. When I was a child, if I ran inside my home after getting into a fist-swinging scuffle with one of the kids in the hood (usually girls, but sometimes boys), my mother would send me right back out there. Her attitude was the only way to stop a bully was to stand up to her (or him), and mother was right. Unfortunately, too many bullies today are cowards. They eschew a fistfight. Instead, they’ll go home, get a gun, and come back and shoot you.

If the dock captain (identified in a CNN article as Damien Pickett) had been white, would the aggressor (Richard Roberts) have reacted the same way toward him? I doubt it. Roberts may have been a new “kid” on the dock, but he refused several times when Pickett asked him to move his pontoon boat. In his rage, Roberts didn’t see red; he saw black and went after Pickett. And then backup came by land and sea to aid Pickett. One man swung a chair. Rapper Gmac Cash even wrote a song about the incident.

To the amusement of Wakanda fans, MSNBC host Joy Reed humorously wrote, “I’m gonna tell my grandkids this was Black Panther and the Avengers.”

I’ll tell mine that when Roberts started the brawl, if he didn’t know then, he knows now that homies don’t play that.

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Are Things Changing?

by on ·BLM, Justice, Law and Order, Opinion

“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.” — Angela Y. Davis

 

I cried. Yes, I admit I lost it and bawled like a baby whose pacifier had been snatched away. But mine were happy tears.

Until yesterday, when the verdict against Derek Chauvin was announced, I had not seen so much hugging, hi-fiving, and joyful weeping since Joe Biden was elected president. Telephone signals crisscrossed nationwide as friends and associates, many expressing stunned disbelief but euphoric gratification, phoned each other to confirm that what we heard was not a cruel joke or a bad dream. The track record of bad cops vs. Black Americans trapped in their web is common knowledge. How many Black people didn’t find it hard to believe their eyes and ears when Judge Peter Cahill said, “Guilty. Guilty. Guilty?” Say whaaat?

I wrote my first post about George Floyd on May 28, 2020, nearly a year ago. Although I have always maintained hope for justice for Mr. Floyd, honestly, I wasn’t expecting it, not even after a video circulated worldwide showed Chauvin kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck, and pressing the life out of him. I didn’t expect it even after Chauvin was fired and arrested and put on trial. I still have little faith in the so-called justice system. It has failed us so many times before until “Say Their Names” has become as much a rallying cry as Black Lives Matter. On Tuesday, my prayers and the prayers of millions of principled people – people of color and whites – everywhere were answered. My close friends and I collectively exhaled a sigh of relief, although disbelief still hovers in the shadows of the future like an ominous cloud as does Chauvin’s expected appeal.

During the days after Mr. Floyd’s murder and the following weeks, I refused to watch the video showing his demise. I just couldn’t. Whenever I knew that it was about to be shown, I’d mute the TV and look away until I thought the segment was over. In the months preceding the trial, when I thought of the tragic way in which the incapacitated man was murdered, in my mind, I would see the smirk on the killer cop’s face as he pressed his knee into Mr. Floyd’s neck. Today, I replace the image of that smirk with what I saw above the mask on Chauvin’s face after the verdict was read – deer in the headlight eyes. I imagine and hope that what was going through his mind was gut-wrenching fear; fear of a dire future.

I’ve learned of so many – too many – senseless murders-by-cop of black men and women during my lifetime. I hope that the Chauvin verdict will change bad policing in America.

I pray for Darnella Frazier, the teenager who courageously stood her ground and filmed Mr. Floyd’s murder. I also pray for all of those who testified against the rogue cop, especially the other police officers who – this time – ignored the blue wall, that informal code of silence among police officers, and did the right thing.

I know that before the verdict and even in its light, many organizations and some individual citizens continue calling for police abolition (replacing policing with other systems of public safety) or defunding the police. As I understand it, “defunding the police” does not (as some believe) mean doing away with the police. It means reducing police department budgets and reallocating or redistributing those funds toward essential social services.

I hope that Congress will pass H.R.7120 , the Justice in Policing Act of 2020, aka the George Floyd bill. Not only will the bill address systemic police misdeeds, among other things, but it will also create a national registry to compile data on complaints and records of police misconduct. Ideally, that registry will prevent bad cops who willingly leave or are fired from the police force in one city from relocating to another police force in a different town. The proposed ordinance is primarily intended to “hold law enforcement accountable for misconduct in court, improve transparency through data collection, and reform police training and policies.”

I don’t think that the majority of Americans are anti-police. I’m not. I know that there are good officers out there. We all are just sick and tired of bad cops using their badge and gun to get away with murder, literally. I agree with Michael Moore, who in his Podcast proposes that our country “abolish a sick and cruel system of policing and replace it with a humane and accountable system of Public Safety and Compassion.”

What right-minded person wouldn’t agree that this country’s law enforcement system needs massive change? Who would not like to believe that there truly is liberty and justice for all?

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Reflecting on My Time Spent on Capitol Hill

by on ·Political

My first time going to the Capitol building was in the 1980s. I was charmed by the splendor of the place and was no less enchanted each time I went there after my initial visit. Unlike some of my acquaintances who worked in Capitol Hill offices, I did not, nor was I ever a tourist. And I certainly wasn’t part of a mob of homegrown terrorists like those that swarmed the place on January 6. I was there on official business.

For 13 years, I worked in the K Street corridor as a staff assistant for two different lobbying firms (or as the head honchos prefer to call them Government Affairs offices). For the majority of my ten years with the initial association, our office was located on the same block as what is now known as Black Lives Matter Plaza. In addition to other duties, my gofer responsibilities required periodic trips to the Capitol to deliver official papers or PAC checks, retrieve copies of bills from the Senate or House document rooms, and occasionally attend Congressional committee hearings.

After showing my work ID card to the Capitol Hill police officer and going through the security screening process, I would be allowed inside the building and, if necessary, given directions to the destination office.

Sometimes while walking past the rows of offices in the pristine hallways of the historic building, I’d think about the enslaved blacks who played a significant role in erecting the structure. I took pride in knowing that numerous black legislators, many of who may have been descendants of slaves, were holding positions of power in the Capitol, or they had been there and left their legacy.

During my years of working in the political arena, I embraced some notable lawmakers as my she-roes and heroes: Congresswomen Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, Bella Abzug, and Diane Feinstein. Representatives William (Bill) Gray, III, Kweisi Mfume, John Lewis, Bobby Rush, and Daniel Moynihan were also on my most admired politicians list. I never had the opportunity to meet any of those previously mentioned except one. When our Governmental Affairs office held its annual legislative reception, I met Moynihan, Senator Ted Kennedy, and others who slip my memory. I would eventually meet Speaker John Boehner, a good friend with one of the firm’s vice presidents.

There was one brilliant and charismatic politician who I admired above all others. Not only did I meet him, he graciously posed for a picture with me. He was the Illinois State Senator who would announce his intention to run for president within months after our meeting. He ran. He won. And I will forever treasure my photo taken with Barack Obama.

Few people know that beneath the seat of government, the legislators have a private subway. The Capitol Subway system connects the Capitol with Senate and House office buildings. I had the opportunity of riding the train a few times back then. Since then, the system has been significantly modernized.

My reflection of better times brings me to the shocking and disgusting event that occurred at the Capitol on Wednesday. I never thought I’d see anything like it in my lifetime, radicals busting through doors, breaking windows, climbing over balconies, hanging on the walls, and trudging devilishly through the galleries.

People worldwide watched the insanity on their televisions as mobs of MAGA cult members and insurgents breached the Capitol building. I could visualize Putin, Kim Jong-un, and Xi Jinping enthusiastically wringing their hands, grinning madly, and chomping at the bit.

I cannot end this post without mentioning something that has occurred to countless people, including me. I have expressed this on my social media page, as have numerous other people. We know, WE KNOW, that if Black Lives Matter or any other black organization had breached the Capitol as the MAGA cult did, the outcome would have been very different. I can imagine the Capitol columns blemished with red splotches and rivers of blood streaming down the steps. Instead of five dead white people, there might have been 500 black corpses scattered all over the property. There wouldn’t be enough body bags in the city to handle the carnage. My opinion on the body count may be extreme, but fair-minded Americans will agree with the premise. Even President-Elect Biden acknowledged as much during his news conference on Thursday.

For the rest of my life, memories of the times I spent on Capitol Hill will be tarnished by the horrific event of January 6 because I cannot erase the scenes from my mind.

My condolences to the family of Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick who lost his life during the lawlessness and mayhem on January 6, 2021.

 

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Visiting Black Lives Matter Plaza–Part 1 of 2

by on ·Activism, Lifestyle and Culture, Political, Race Matters

Last Sunday, I took a walk through the valley of the shadow of death. OK, I’m being overdramatic. However, the nearly empty roads along the generally bustling Sixteenth Street corridor resembled a scene from the Twilight Zone. Hardly anyone was on the streets.

Until that day, aside from a doctor’s appointment and a couple of outings to the store, I had not wandered outside my home since mid-March. That’s when the COVID pandemic showed up like an uninvited houseguest and drove everybody into isolation.

My first time taking the 6.04 mile walk along Sixteenth Street happened on 911. Planes had flown into the twin towers in New York, and another crashed into the western side of the Pentagon. Reporters broadcast that a hijacked plane, later identified as United Airlines Flight 93, was believed to be heading to the White House or the U.S. Capitol. Subsequently, that aircraft crashed in a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. D.C.’s Metro service had been canceled, and everyone was scrambling to move away from the business district ahead of another anticipated terrorist attack. I had no choice but to take the long, solitary walk home.

I had not rewalked that path since retiring a decade ago. Until Sunday, September 13, Grandparent’s Day, this energetic nana decided to challenge herself, to see if I could still go the distance. My purpose was twofold. I had been yearning to visit the area north of Lafayette Square (nicknamed the President’s Park) since June 5, 2020. On that day, hundreds of demonstrators turned out to protest the murder-by-cop of George Floyd. Later, the defiant D.C. mayor renamed the block Black Lives Matter Plaza.

A longtime history buff, I wanted to visit the area and feel the history. To walk the path and stand on the spot where the late Congressman John Lewis made his last public appearance on June 7, five weeks before his death.

So at 7 a.m. Sunday, my daughter and I leave my home and trek over to Carton Baron. From there, we head south. I’ve lived all my life in Chocolate City, and the scenic, tree-lined 16th Street, bordered by nicely manicured lawns, clean sidewalks, and charming houses, has always been my favorite thoroughfare.

Sixteenth Street runs north-to-south in a straight line. If you start at Eastern Avenue in Silver Spring, Maryland, and go south, you’ll pass picturesque homes, the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Rock Creek Park, and Carter Baron. Also along the way are several foreign embassies, including the Embassy of the Republics of the Congo, Cambodia, Lithuania, and Angola.

Near the halfway point of our excursion, we stop briefly in Malcolm X Park. I’ve loved that place since I was a teenager and used to visit there occasionally with my friends. Also known as Meridian Hill Park, the property sits across the street from Howard University’s Meridian Hill Hall. The Hall was one of Howard’s dorms until the building was sold in 2016. The developer plans to convert it to rental housing.

Continuing downtown, we pass Scott circle. Mounted in its center is the equestrian statue of Civil War General Winfield Scott. A short distance away, on the right-hand side of the street, the National Geographic Museum stands temporarily closed. Its windows boarded-up since the George Floyd protests. We go a few more blocks and 90 minutes after we started our trip, we cross K Street and arrive at Black Lives Plaza.

At the entrance of the plaza, on the right-hand side at the corner of 16th & K, stands the Regis Hotel. (Decades ago, when I worked in a government affairs office in the building directly across the street, it was called the Sheraton-Carlton.)

As I stand there, reminiscing, I remember spring 1991. I am watching from the fourth-floor window as Queen Elizabeth and her security detail exit the hotel, climb into her motorcade and drive away. How thrilling, I think at the time, I’ve seen the queen. She was in town then, visiting President George H.W. and Barbara Bush. I later learned that the queen also toured some areas of the city with Mayor Sharon Pratt Dixon and other locals.

It was that same window that I rushed to one morning about a year later, after hearing screams coming from outside. I looked down to see a young woman who I later learned worked for Xerox, being dragged beneath the back wheel of a box truck. Pedestrians screaming and gesturing eventually caught the attention of the oblivious driver, and he stopped the truck a few feet beyond the entrance of our building. Paramedics rushed to the scene and extracted the women from beneath the truck. She survived. News reports revealed that the truck driver, who had numerous prior driving violations and was subsequently fired, said he had not seen the woman when she stepped off the curb.

My old workplace building has a new facade and now houses P.J. Clarke’s restaurant. Posted in front of the structure, to the left and right of the double doors, are two large Black Lives Matter signs. Nearly every building on that block and several nearby have signs of assorted shapes and sizes displaying the same persuasive message.

On the same side as the Regis, at the opposite end of the block at H Street, is the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church.

Police cars stationed at both ends of the block restrict vehicles from entering.

There are only about a dozen people in the plaza. In front of the building alongside the Regis, four or five young people are seated in a semi-circle in what appears to be folding lawn chairs. They look as relaxed as if they are socializing in their living room. I wonder if they are some of the numerous activists who participate in the protests that have been ongoing intermittently since the death of George Floyd. (Continued in Part 2)

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Reflecting on Being Too Tired to Laugh

by on ·General, Opinion, Race Matters

My earbuds are in place, and I’m listening to Bobby Womack croon, “I’m looking for a love.”

Not me, Bobby. I’ve got love. I’m looking to laugh again. I want to rediscover humor in a country blanketed under a cloud of gloom.

Anxiety simmers everywhere. I rarely hear anyone laughing anymore. I’m not talking about a forced smile or a polite chuckle. I miss the shoulders jiggling, head thrown back, falling in the chair laughing. I haven’t laughed like that in a long time and rarely see anyone else doing it. But I hear a lot of people saying, “I’m tired.” Not tired like the exhaustion you feel after a long workday at the office. It’s mental fatigue. Enough-is-enough. Sick of the existing state of affairs tired.

My list of tired is long. I’m tired of hearing about social distancing and the coronavirus death toll. Tired too of sheltering in place because going outside means dodging unmasked people and avoiding crowds. I’m tired of anarchy and criminal politicians – rotting from the head down. I’m tired of reports of voter suppression. I am sick and tired of seeing numerous newscasts and amateur videos of black people getting beat down or killed by rogue cops. I am mentally exhausted from seeing unprovoked injustices against the same people for driving, walking, working, living – while black. I’m tired of reading incredible reports about black people found hanged in public places, and their death ruled a suicide. I’m tired of seeing non-violent protesters attacked by goon squads and racist hatemongers because the activists rightly believe that black lives matter.

I’m tired of being tired. I need to get my laugh on. Reset my funny bone.

I used to have a good sense of humor; don’t know when my funny side slipped away like a runaway bride. I woke up one day and realized that finding something to laugh about in a topsy-turvy society is difficult. Experts say that humor keeps us psychologically healthy, so I often remind myself of the words of Maya Angelou, “Continue to allow humor to lighten the burden of your tender heart.”

I want not to be tired. I want to laugh freely again. I want normalcy. To hell with the so-called new norm. I long for a return to normalcy as it existed half-century ago before people began questioning, “What is normal?” If half-a-century is a stretch, then I’ll settle for normalcy as it was before 2020, better still before 2016.

I know I am not alone. Every God-fearing person I know is as tired as I am of the status quo. We all want to feel untired. We want to relax and laugh again.

I believe that eventually, things will get better. Scientists will discover a vaccine for COVID-19, and November 3 could bring hope for a major overhaul in January 2021. That would surely give us something to laugh about.

I am a realistic optimist. I realize that a nightmare scenario could recur on Election Day. (God forbid!) So, I’ll wait until the final count is in, and refined people have reclaimed the building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And then, to paraphrase a favorite hymn of mine, I won’t feel no ways tired, ’cause you’ll find me at Lafayette Square, aka BLM Plaza, laughing my ass off while doing a happy dance.

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