Vote for peaceful America and against the obstructionists
There were protests across the country and violence in the streets of America. The year was 1967. The frustration that was brewing had come to a boil. Early in 1968, the Kerner Commission, appointed in 1967, issued its report.
The commission, formally known as the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, was an 11-member commission established by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the causes of the 1967 race riots in the United States and to provide recommendations for the future.
The commission said that America was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal.”
The report suggested that one main cause of urban violence was white racism and suggested that white America bore much of the responsibility for black rioting and rebellion. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerner_Commission.)
Later in 1968, two prominent American leaders were assassinated: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. King was black and Kennedy was white. They had been involved in the Civil Rights Movement in various ways.
In the 21st century, in 2016, it appears the conditions are ripe for a renewal of the sentiment of 1967-68, with a twist. We know white racism is still here. In Dallas on Thursday night, July 7, a black American who has not been linked to Islam, has been linked to the assassinations of five white police officers and the wounding of seven other police officers and two civilians. According to police, the black man in Dallas, Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, of Mesquite, Texas, cited the fatal shootings of two black men at the hands of police for targeting white police officers last week.
Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, was fatally shot while in the custody of Baton Rouge Police Department officers on July 5. Police held him down while he was shot.
Philando Castile, a 32-year-old black man, was fatally shot after being stopped by St. Anthony police officers in Minnesota. He had a gun legally but was shot anyway.
High-profile violence in the United States in the last few months had been linked to American terror-ists in San Diego, California, and Orlando, Florida, who were purported to be Muslims. Those American terrorists pledged allegiance to ISIS. They used military-style weapons in their massacres.
In 2016, the twist is that black men, unlike in 1968, have access to the same military-type firepower the non-black men have access to. The violence has escalated to a new level. Micah Johnson served in Afghanistan and had served in the U.S. Army Reserve. He had no prior criminal record. There was nothing to keep him from obtaining the weapons he used to kill and wound the police officers and wound others. He used his Second Amendment right to bear arms.
Johnson might have still been able to obtain weapons, but if the military-style weapons were not available, the police would have been on a more level playing field. The Dallas police were not equipped with the military-style weapons.
Why are these weapons available to civilians? What are they used for outside the military? The weapons are designed to kill people en masse. What other use could there be for these weapons?
Republicans in Congress have resisted addressing gun violence in America. In the manner of protests in the 1960s, House members protested to get votes in the House on several gun control-related measures. Assault weapons should be banned. Those weapons should be taken out of the hands of civilians, who are not fighting against a foreign military force.
The debate on gun control continues as the hatred, white and black, boils over and shows its face behind the triggers of assault rifles. Americans nationwide, including in Winston-Salem, are shaken by the killings of black men by police and the killing of police officers by Micah Johnson. They are uniting in grief and protests.
Until the gun violence in America is addressed, the grief and protests will continue.
Just as the assault rifles should disappear from the civilian marketplace, the obstructionists should disappear from their seats in Congress. Vote in November for those who put a peaceful America first.
