How Far We Haven't Come!

As someone who has fought for civil and human rights, I am absolutely amazed at how bad things seem to be in Ferguson and across the country when it comes to race and policing. Naively, I thought things had gotten better but the images I've seen over the past week prove that wrong.

Fifty years ago I watched as marchers got beaten back with clubs and trampled with horses in Selma, Al. Seeing that shocking image played out on TV, I decided to go to Selma and participate in the protests that ensued. Those times scared me. People did in fact get killed before, during and after the formal marches in Selma and Montgomery. I stood facing policeman and deputies with helmets, holstered pistols and clubs. We were taunted and spat upon, some of us beaten and jailed. The country, the courts and elected officials responded. Some and then many believed that change had swept the country. That was fifty years ago.

This week I watched in shock as I saw police officers pointing semi-automatic weapons at protesters, clubs be damned. I watched police dressed as soldiers shoot tear gas canisters from military vehicles. Some guns with bean bags and rubber bullets, but others, who knows? How far we haven't come. How did this happen and why aren't more people shocked at these methods of policing. Who's in charge was a question that screamed out throughout the week. And sadly we have other serious problems. People are seeing these events differently. There are those who think it's just a bunch of 'those people' making trouble and not letting justice just take care of things. There are those who think this is just one more left wing attack on US values being fed by outside agitators and an elitist media. But this is much, much deeper.

On the same day that everyone condemned the release of a video of the killing of James Foley, the St. Louis police released a video of a young, seemingly troubled black man, being shot by two police officers and few people blinked. Why are we so blind to obscenity wherever it exists? How far we haven't come.

Some of what we've accomplished over the past fifty years.....we've developed more modern weaponry then clubs and pistols. Interesting though, they're still in the arsenal. It's become acceptable for an investigative report to be written over a period of a week as witnesses and stories evolve and are made public. It's become acceptable to close ranks around an officer involved in a questionable shooting. It's acceptable that the New York Times reports that witness accounts of Michael Brown's shooting 'differ sharply' without any reporting or record of the sharp differences. How far we haven't come.

Racism is institutional. It gets passed from person to person, from generation to generation. It's also global. We need some institutional and global solutions. Policing and weaponry are also institutional and global issues.

I've met good and committed policeman. They exist probably more then we all think. They have difficult jobs, some may say impossible jobs. I've also seen good and impressive community policing. It exists, but probably depends on those good people mentioned above. Sadly, there are more Fergusons then anyone really wants to admit. We will see them exposed in the future. We need to think about how they continue to exist.

It's sad how far we haven't come.