Tag Archives: Black Lives Matter

One City Can Become Any City

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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One City Can Become

Any City, Every City

Even though my column runs on the Opinion page, I generally try to keep it a retreat from politics and controversies and instead provide a smile, a laugh, some sunshine among the clouds.

Today is an exception. Today is thunder and lightning.

John Lewis, the legendary civil rights leader who died eight days ago, famously said: “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up.”

What we have seen happening in Portland, Oregon, is not right, not fair, not just. In honor of Lewis, I have to speak up.

American citizens being snatched off sidewalks by unidentified federal forces in unmarked vans and not told why nor where they are being taken, is not right.

“A Wall of Moms” being tear-gassed while peacefully trying to protect Black Lives Matter protesters from federal forces, camouflaged and armed as if for war, is not fair.

Peacefully protesting “Wall of Moms” being tear-gassed by federal agents in Portland.

A 52-year-old United States Navy veteran standing as still as a statue while being pepper sprayed in the face and having a semi-automatic weapon pointed at his chest and then being repeatedly beaten with batons by federal agents, their home-run swings so powerful as to break a bone in his hand as well as a finger so badly it required surgery, is not just.

Indeed, using excessive police force against citizens who are protesting police brutality is ironic and tragic. Understand, this was a man who has bravely served this country, not a rioter. The video of his beating resembles the newsreels showing John Lewis being violently billy clubbed nearly to death by a state trooper during a civil rights march in Selma, Ala., more than half a century ago.

How very little has changed in so long a time.

There are those who will label me a liberal (rightly so) and broadly label the Portland protesters (wrongly so) “rioters”, “looters” and “anarchists.” In turn, they argue the heavy-handed force is merited.

Such callousness is where the slope gets slippery, grows steeper, becomes a point of no return.

As Martin Niemöller famously wrote in 1946: “First they came for the Communists / And I did not speak out / Because I was not a Communist / Then they came for the Socialists / And I did not speak out / Because I was not a Socialist / Then they came for the trade unionists / And I did not speak out / Because I was not a trade unionist / Then they came for the Jews / And I did not speak out / Because I was not a Jew / Then they came for me / And there was no one left / To speak out for me.”

Those who support the current deployment of what has been called “secret police” and “American Gestapo” should be every bit as fearful by what is happening as are those who support the protesters. After all, Portland can become Plano; a “blue” city can become a “red” city; any city can become every city.

Indeed, we must all heed Niemöller’s warning. Black Lives Matter supporters being beaten with batons and gassed and pulled off the streets without justification today can tomorrow become open-carry defenders rounded up without warrant; “they” and “he” can become “us” and “me.”

The uniformed officers, politicians and others who enacted similar violence in the name of our government against John Lewis and his heroic peers as they practiced civil disobedience have not been remembered kindly by history. Today will be no different.

We all need to speak out for each other. Now.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

 

Black Lives Matter – In All Ways

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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Black Lives Matter –

– In All Ways

Words fail me right now, and greatly so as a white male, but nonetheless I feel I must try…

Black lives matter.

Black lives gave their lives in The Revolutionary War and Civil War, World Wars I and II, Korean and Vietnam, the Gulf War and Afghanistan and Iraq.

And, 76 years ago today on June 6, Black lives stormed the beaches at Normandy.

Black lives save lives as surgeons, E.R. nurses and chemotherapists; as firefighters and paramedics; as lifeguards and suicide hotline volunteers; and, yes, as police officers.

Black lives are 2.5 times more likely than whites to be killed by police.

Black lives ran into the burning Twin Towers on Sept. 11.

Black lives write novels and computer code and love letters.

Black lives rock babies to sleep and are rock stars, rock climbers and rocket scientists.

Black lives are journalists and biologists, perfectionists and pedicurists, artists and astrophysicists.

Black lives grow gardens, grow farms, grow dreams.

Black lives play the piano, guitar and drums; play video games, beer pong and paintball.

Black lives paint masterpieces, paint houses, “paint the outside corner” for strike three.

Black lives know Martin Luther King’s words “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” but wonder why it has bent so very little in America over the past 400 years.

Black lives bleed and weep, laugh and love, pray and raise families.

Young Black lives are much more likely to go hungry than white children.

Black lives read The Bible, The Quran, The Torah and all other religious texts.

Black lives also read Shakespeare and Steinbeck, Du Bois and Baldwin, Harry Potter and comic books.

Black lives march in protest for Black lives and also for rainbow ribbon-wearing lives and pink ribbon-wearing lives and jigsaw puzzle piece-wearing lives.

Black lives need us all to march with them, kneel with them, stand with them – and video record them whenever they are confronted by police.

Black lives give Valentine bouquets, wear prom corsages and boutonnières, place flowers on headstones.

Black lives earn GEDs and Doctorates.

Black lives are playwrights and poets, singers and songwriters, actors and musicians.

Black lives are butchers, bakers and NBA slam-dunk makers.

Black lives are Little Leaguers and Major Leaguers, hotdog vendors and ticket takers.

Black lives fill stadiums and arenas as entertainers, cheer in the stands, and sweep them clean afterward.

Black lives are preachers and teachers, mentors and renters, truck drivers and cancer survivors.

Black lives are astronauts and pilots, Uber drivers and limo riders, cyclists and skateboarders.

Black lives are small business owners and big captains of industry, minimum wage earners and millionaires, lemonade stand kids and startup entrepreneurs.

Black lives are charged on average, even after controlling for debt and credit history, 0.31 percentage points more in mortgage interest than white borrowers.

Black lives sing at birthday parties, dance at weddings, grieve at funerals.

Black lives gaze at the stars and make wishes for future generations while remembering those of the past.

Black lives are golden anniversary lovers and newlyweds, new parents and grandparents.

Black lives count their baby’s fingers and toes at birth; count their blessings on Thanksgiving; count through memories at reunions.

Black lives are our family members and loved ones, classmates and colleagues, neighbors and friends.

Black lives jog in the streets; walk home after buying Skittles; have cars that break down on the road; ask people to put their dog on a leash in the park; and cry out for their mother when they can’t breathe.

Black lives matter dearly.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

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Asking, Listening, Learning

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE! 

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Trying to Walk Around in Another’s Skin

Many years ago, perhaps two decades, a wise mentor made an observation that has resonated with me ever since. He shared that he had just seen something that warmed his heart and gave him hope for a post-racial America – a white boy, about age 8, riding double on a bike with his black friend.

“It was wonderful,” he said.

After a pause came the wisdom: “But then I realized what will really be wonderful is when the day comes that I – and everyone else – simply see two boys riding double.”1blackwhiteboys

That day, it was tragically hammered home yet again and again and again in recent days, has not yet arrived.

What is arriving, hopefully, is some education. Personally, among the things I learned from this string of senseless civilian and police deaths, is how naïve I am in understanding even to a small degree how rampant racism is – in small ways as well as headline ways – in 2016 America.

In the important novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Atticus advises his young daughter, Scout: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Heeding this wisdom, I reached out to a few of my black friends in an attempt to be less naïve about my understanding of their points of view. Inadequately, but sincerely, I wanted to climb into their skin and imagine walking – and driving – around in it.

To be honest, I was worried about seeming ignorant or having my words ring hollow. My trepidation proved ill-founded. My questions were appreciated. The silence from most of their white friends regarding these issues, it turns out, is more saddening than saying the wrong thing.

The friends I reached out to are very successful professionals, and so at first I asked: “Have you ever been pulled over by the police for no reason?”

I quickly became enlightened that the better question, even for a physician or professor who is a black male, is: “How many times have you been stopped for no reason?”

Also, the real question is not “if” but “how often” are you met with cold stares of objectification when you go for a morning jog in your own gentrified neighborhood? Or to your local Starbucks? Or to the library with your young son?

How often are you shadowed by an employee when you go into a store in the mall? How often this, that, so many things that I, as a white male, never experience.

Something else I have not experienced is worrying about my son if he is ever pulled over by a police officer. However, for a handful of years I have worried about Peter – my son’s dear college classmate who I have become so close with he calls me “Pops” – if he is ever pulled over.

Correction: every time he is pulled over, even for a broken taillight that magically works when he gets home, which I now less naively know is the reality.

“Pops, your concern and love is a gift,” Peter, a technology consultant and founder of a nonprofit organization helping at-risk youth, texted me a few days ago when I reminded him to be safe – as has become my habit after each headline police shooting of a black man.

“I am friends with a couple of great cops,” Peter, who lives in Dallas, continued. “I have had to deal with cops pulling me over since I moved to this country (from Ghana) and haven’t really had problems. Today, I am more worried about what the cops are thinking I may do and how that heightens their anxiety when they approach a man my size who could be deadly at 6-foot-4 & 250 lbs even without a gun.”

Back to those two boys riding double on a bike. Twenty years later, this is what they make me think: now grown, if they are together – on a bike, in a car, on foot – they will still be seen as different.

This is not wonderful.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”