Rita's Spur to Action

It is a dangerous road to travel for this country to suddenly turn against the police forces nationwide.

Starting just in New York city alone, the crime rate is far lower than it was in 1990. At least it was lower before this antagonism and threats of defunding towards the police. 

There is  no question that there is racial antipathy amongst the police as there is in the American population in general.

The black lives matter campaign is certainly a worthy cause. It is time for this country to deal with its prejudice and start by changing its attitude towards people of color. But that does not mean that our society, our nation or our people of color, or that any of us are pure as the driven snow.
There are crimes committed and there are people killed. There are shootings and useless deaths and murders caused by some amongst all of us. We cannot blame the police for all.

The police in this country do need to be trained quite differently from the way they have been until now. 

In France, Belgium, England, New Zealand, Ireland, Iceland and Norway the police do not carry guns nor do the citizens of these countries. America has more gun owners than the entire rest of the world. Anybody in America can own a gun and as a consequence almost everybody who wants a gun has one.

It is true and obvious that some members of the police forces around the country are prejudiced in some way or other so it is with a large portion of the population of the United States of America.
As cops often are faced by a person carrying a gun or having a gun pointed at them, the cops in this country are usually trained to kill, if necessary in order to defend themselves.

It is hard to believe that there are many circumstances in which a well trained police officer, who should be wearing the proper protective gear, from head to toe, should ever find himself in a position where he has to kill a suspect.
It may be that people of color are more often suspected than white people but even, that does not give the police the right to be judge, jury and executioner. They do have the right and they should have the training to be able to disarm, disable and arrest a suspect.

The extent to which racial prejudice enters into a police officer’s decision makingis a reflexion of America’s racial attitudes and prejudice.

This is the time for this country, this nation to finally address this issue. Yes, it is true that black lives matter. However, it is equally true that all lives matter. 

It is also true that in America for 150 years or more there has been a prejudicial attitude towards people of color and this attitude has denied entire segments of our society from having a proper education, proper and affordable housing, medical assistance and job opportunities. This prejudice behavior cannot be blamed on the police force alone. 

This is a societal problem and perhaps this is the moment at last when we as Americans can change these attitudes. The police will change as the society demands.

The corona virus should have opened the eyes of America to the heroism of so many Afro-Americans as well as others who put their lives on the line to save our lives.

It is time for America to embrace all Americans and to realize that all lives are meaningful and matter.

We must recognize that there are those in our society who do commit crimes. We do need the protection of a properly trained police force. We should support them as they put their lives in jeopardy for us. Nonetheless, this does not exonerate them from their obligation to treat all Americans alike. 

All of our lives matter.

It is depressing to look into the future of this country. The closer we come to the election the less confident I am that this great nation of ours is going to be able to work its way out of the pandemic and this depression and to find the way forward with 37 million people plus unemployed.

How will we ever find the confidence to reenter the world when we do not even have the simplest plan?

It may not be a totally secure system but produce and provide thermometers to test the temperature of each and every person entering a building. Every building.

At least then, one would have some sense of security on any given day that the people with whom you work in the same building, are free of the virus.

Certainly it should not be that difficult to get  enough thermometers made and distributed. However, we couldn’t even get life saving protective body covering and masks made for our front line workers. 

It is clear that what was really needed early on was for the federal government to order the people who manufacture sleep masks, to make safety masks instead. 

The government should have instantly ordered the garment industry to manufacture life saving protective garments for the front line workers. It should not have been a very complicated conversion.

Although they are not in the garment business, theater actors in NYC have been volunteering since the beginning of the virus to cut protective fabric and the wardrobe departments of the theaters have been sewing the garments and then distributing them to the hospitals.

I remember that during WW II there were many problems that needed immediate solutions. One that I particularly remember  was that in 1942, America had entered the war and the Bazooka had just been invented. This was the first portable rocket launcher. It was essential to immediately find the material with which to make the barrels. The president locked his brain trust into a room until they solved the problem. 

The problem was solved immediately. They took the pipes from closed down oil drilling equipment and converted those pipes into the barrels of the bazookas. 

Today we couldn’t even manufacture face masks.

Actually we could have. We could have manufactured face masks right at the beginning of the pandemic  and we could have manufactured protective garments that would have saved lives. But we didn’t.

Today we have virtually no government to mandate the solutions. 

In fact we have no government at all. What we have instead is a narcissistic family running this country as if we were all chattel,  here only to enrich and aggrandize them.

The Trump family does not need to wear masks or protective garments. Only we their slaves, need to wear masks and gloves to protect them from us. 

Is this our way back? 

Hit the streets, rise up, rebel, before it’s too late.