LET’S FACE THIS, TOO

With all the demand and rightfully so, for the police departments across our land to stop the abuse and start respecting the people they serve, a hard fact keeps rearing its ugly head.

We need a national leader, namely the President of the United States to create a dialogue between the civilian population and the police, one that reassures both sides that they are on the same side.

Then they need to ask themselves: why? Why does this violence continue to happen especially to black people? What is the root of all the violence, what motivates policemen individually to either respect or disregard the rule of law?

There is a question that keeps nagging at me, and that is why is their looting, vandalism, shooting, and knee bending into the necks of civilians. If you are peacefully protesting, why would you need to break the confidence of the police by looting? Does this not cause the prejudice of certain police officers to be fed?

There is the question of why the neighborhoods themselves that experience this vandalism by looters are not protesting it? If morality is the argument of protestors, it must work both ways, if you wish to correct the problems of racism and soothe the channels of peace for the future, that issue must be tackled also. In the Sunday papers on Long Island, reports of looting, vandalism, and lawlessness were reported in The Bronx, NY. How does justice serve itself when your people are being discriminated against the rule of law, yet you destroy your neighbor's livelihood by looting and robbing your very own community? How does that equate with justice for the oppressed when you create the conditions for oppression.

Be sure, the police need to be trained for all the right reasons, as do the looters. We can’t have social justice without social change.

Give the protesters a platform on their terms, giving them the means to demonstrate and the freedom of expression that is so critical for all of us to hear, but also, give the police the reasons why it is necessary to listen and to use the constraint, but also use the lessons on we are teaching each other on the looters stop using all the turmoil for stealing from their communities and neighbors, setting back the reason we all need.