This Old Dog

For those who are well applied to mindfulness, don't indulge in what should not be done. Persist in what should be. The police are killing us. So now what?

Some will think I am wrong for some of the things I am about to say, but as it goes: "If not me, who? If not now, when?" If we do not learn, grow, and move forward with and for each other, then we will lack the ability to change these issues. We cannot continue to think of and see this as a color issue, an ethnicity issue, a race issue when, at its very core, it is an issue of class, social division, a humanity issue. Calling it so should in no way devalue it. In fact, to use these new perspectives would make it more of a people issue, an US issue.

If we see each other as separate groups, as a separate people, we will not see it as our problem. When you come to these issues only representing your cause, how can I see it as our cause. Or more so, my cause?

These deaths are the worst of what we all are as a people. We have all lost so much. Let them not be in vain. Let them be a cause and reason to grow as a people. We cannot do this as a separate people!

This country is like a big house. The cities and states are but rooms in this house, our house. Do we really want to be a house divided? Is this how we want our home to be? I think not.

We say we will not tolerate hatred yet offer little in return. When terror strikes, we rush to help with all we can. yet the rest of the time, we treat each other in such a way that terrorists must be laughing at us! WHAT ARE WE DOING?! I am not saying we should hold hands and sing Amazing Grace—though how could that be a bad thing?—but I am saying we must go about this a better way. Divided we fall, united we heal.

Fact! How is that a person sitting in a prison with tears in their heart and soul overseeing police kill people, and people killing the police, sees these things while it appears that others do not?

We can no longer say what kind of house we want. We must show what kind of house we are. We all know racism and bias exists, and I mean that all the way around. However, we must also know how much progress has taken place as well. To deny that is to disrespect all those who fought and died for civil rights. And we cannot deny that much must be done by all of us. If we truly want to see change, we must all make it happen together.

Let me lay to rest an old adage: That you can't teach an old dog new tricks. You most certainly can, provided that the old dog is willing to learn them. And that is what we must all be doing: willing. That starts with first seeing the other person as a fellow human being. How could it be any other way? So let us stop and do that first.

You better believe that black lives matter! But you also better believe that we all matter, which means believing that peace in this country we live in, share, and love matters just as much as we as a people matter to each other. If we say hate, anger, and mistreatment from police are wrong, how can we revisit that and still expect a positive outcome? When has negativity ever resulted in positive change? Bingo.

We always claim to respect those who keep it real. So let's keep it real. Shooting a cop will not help. Blocking a freeway and stopping regular people from going about their lives will not help. If anything, it only serves to alienate the very people who are willing to help.

Movements today have something no other movement up to this point has had, the single most powerful tool ever to effect change: the internet. Let's start using it the right way. The way to do that is to get as many people as you can to use the second most powerful tool for change: the vote. The same grassroots, ground force movement that helped elect President Obama is the very same one that can change the laws that govern our society. Fact!

We, the people, must first create a policy or proposal, and let our elected office holders know that if they do not make the changes we need and push forth our policies, we will elect someone who will! One of the most important issues of civil rights was the right to vote. Has that power been lost in all of this?

How is that record numbers of people are registered to vote yet not see that same voting power as a way to make changes happen? How is it that we rally against one issue but not against a system we all know must be fixed?

In the end, Trump will go away. But these troubles we are having will not unless we trump them too. With the vote, we can tell the government to change not ask it to. We have the power to change it ourselves. Let us cease asking others to do what we can do ourselves. As we have learned, in the end, what you ask to be done for you can be often done to you.

We need to stop this divisiveness and see the other person as one of our own in every way. Let's take the Olympics as an example of this much needed unity. We, as a country, will cheer for all of our athletes who represent our nation. Yet at this very moment, in the very same country, we act like we are separated by language, culture, skin color, religious belief, gender, sexual identity, neighborhood, or city. Let's cheer for everyday people who are as much as part of our county as you or me. I, as well as the rest of us, cheered for Gabby Douglas as much as I did for Michael Phelps because they both represented me. They both went to show the world the best they could for our country. What kind of country are we giving them to represent?

We need the police to be a part of our community, to walk around the streets, to be there for more than arresting and brutalizing us. The need to show us they are more than just police, that they are people too. And we as a people need to thank the police every day. Thank them for the job they do for us. For risking and giving their lives to keep us safe. We thank our military for the same reason. It's time we thank the polic as well.

I am as concerned for black lives as I ma for the lives of the police, as much as I am concerned for our country and all our ways of life. And the fact that the majority of the police killings are against others than blacks and the majority of black homicides are committed by other black matters to me as much as the rest.

Please allow me to end this as I began it: I watch all this from a prison cell with tears in my heart and soul, unable to understand how we don't see the other person unless it's in sports or when a disaster strikes. In asking for change, understanding, and unity, we must be seeing only the wrong and not the right in others. The worst form of mis-education comes from within.

Speaking of right and wrong, I would rather be seen as wrong for trying to go about this the right way than think I am right for trying to go about this the wrong way.

In Peace,
Tommy Brennick

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Comment from poster:
And so it is, Tommy. Panem et circenses (Latin: bread and circuses; provision of the means of life and recreation by government to appease discontent).

It's a real wonder to me how it is you fail to prognosticate the obvious Marxist intention of the Forth Estate disturbing the peace under the guise of accountability. Your concentration upon the domestic hoopla merely adds mass to the domestic hoopla, you see? Whereas an actual Ezekiel 33 watchman would sound the alarm on the Yiddish stratagem of Karl Marx introducing class struggle and dictatorship, ushering in a classless society.

Why don't you read Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 to glimpse Yiddish ambitions?

In struggle,
William Goehler