THANKFUL FRIDAY

4 ever

7 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "4 ever"

We love. It is inherent to our nature, to love, to desire, to want to be desired. Love comes in many different forms. The love a mother has for her child is different than the love she has for her partner who helped create that child. Love is big. Love is small. We all love. The old saying of “you can’t always choose the one you love” holds some truth. If love was a choice, I’m not so sure it is something I would choose some times. Love has consequences. Love can be illegal. Interracial marriages were illegal for years. It wasn’t until 1967 that Supreme Court ruled that banning interracial marriages violated the 14th Amendment. Same Sex marriages took much longer to be recognized, but there are now 26 countries recognize same sex marriages.

There are at least 14 countries where homosexuality is punishable by death.

You could be put to death for love.

This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Our government kept lists of known homosexuals and favorite meeting places. Cities would routinely do raids to rid neighborhoods of gay people. In the early morning hours of June 28th, New York City police raided The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. The usual protocol for these raids was to line everybody up and check IDs. People dressed as women were to accompany a female police officer to the bathroom where they would have to ‘verify’ their sex. That night, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn refused. No one produced IDs and no one was accompanying a female officer to the bathroom. The Police just decided to haul everyone in to jail. Crowds started forming outside while patty wagons pulled up out front and police started loading patrons into the wagons. One woman who was struggling and yelling and complaining about her cuffs being too tight was hit in the head with a baton. She looked at the crowd and yelled “Why don’t you do something?” That’s when the crowd became a mob and things got violent. Crowds surged forward to help those being arrested. Things like bottles and rocks were thrown. The riots and demonstrations against the raid would last for six days. The Stonewall Riots are considered by many to be the event that would expand the LGBT civil rights movement. Two years later, New York City would host the very first Gay Pride Parade. The Stonewall Inn was declared a National Monument in 2016. I have a stamp for it in my National Parks Passport.

It is hard to imagine the Stonewall Inn riots happening today. It’s hard to imagine a lot of things happening today, yet here we are. Still hating and discriminating. Some times I get really bogged down by this. How is it if we teach God is love and love is an inherent human nature, can we still be so hateful to one another? Then I am reminded that those who hate, hate because they were taught to hate. They hate because they were not shown or taught to love. They hate because they are jealous of the freedom to be the person they are and love the person they love. They are jealous of that acceptance, of the comfort that comes with being true to one’s self. I don’t say this to excuse them. But if you know the why, you just might be able to find a way to change it.

Love trumps hate.

I am thankful for those who came before me who have fought so fiercely for love.

LET'S THROW SOME SHIT

I rode the scooter any way.

"I rode the scooter any way."

Before any of you think I'm condoning rioting, think again. Rioting is stupid and ineffective. People on the outside watching all of the rioting are looking at their TV screens and judging those rioters and shaking their heads at the crazy destruction that is taking place. I'm not going to sugar coat or lie about this, but a majority of those outside watchers are white and by the look around my Facebook news feed those white outside watchers are judging the rioters based on the color of their skin. To those watchers, the rioting is about black people going crazy. End of story. It could be that those same people think that rioting should only happen when your favorite basketball team loses the Final Four Championship. Man...look at all those white people rioting because their team lost a basketball game. Golly darn, it sure sucks and makes me so angry when my team loses!

That's sarcasm, by the way. 

From 2010 to now, there have been eighteen riots. Less than half of those have been race related riots. Of those race related riots, all of them have been in result of social injustice. I'm not saying that's a good reason to riot, but I'd rather see people getting angry and throwing things around for a better reason than my basketball team lost a game. The destruction of property seems counter intuitive to me, but there have been times when I've been so angry about something that I've wanted to throw a brick through a window. I can imagine that if I've been discriminated against over and over and watched my friends and neighbors suffer the same treatment day in and day out, I'd be angry enough to throw something bigger than a brick. This riot is not about just having an excuse to commit a crime, but an act of disrespect towards an authority and law that is continuously disrespecting it's community. 

There were several riots that led up to the American Revolution. We are all taught about the Boston Tea Party, a non-violent riot that led to the destruction of property, but there were several other riots like the Gaspee Affair and the Pine Tree Riot that were more violent. Riots, as awful as they are, have the ability to spark great change. It all starts with a conversation. We are talking about what's happening in Baltimore. We are talking about Freddie Gray. We are talking about police brutality. We are continuing the conversation on how to mend race relations in this country. Until that happens, I think we should expect to see some mess. Maybe instead of judging those for rioting, we should be working to make things better so people won't want to riot. 

RACIAL PROFILING IS WRONG AND DOESN'T WORK

I originally sat down to write up an entry for Love Thursday, but my thoughts just keep circling back around to the recent riots and unrest in Ferguson MO. I wanted to say something about this and I didn't want it to get buried in a usual weekly post. This topic is too important for that. Protests started Sunday in response to the shooting of 18 year old Michael Brown. Police say that Michael Brown had an altercation with an officer in which he reached for the officer's gun. Michael Brown was shot as he was running away. Unarmed. Shot multiple times. Witnesses say that Michael Brown even had his hands up and was getting on the ground when the officer shot him a few more times. 

Of course I in no way support rioting or even agree with reacting to violence with more violence. My heart goes out to Michael Brown's family. They deserve to know the truth of the events behind their son's death and they deserve justice. I recognize that I am in no way qualified to discuss matters of rioting, let alone racial profiling. But just like in the case of Trayvon Martin, the events behind Michael Brown's shooting could have easily happened on my street. It's bad enough that it involves racial profiling, but the excessive force has gotten out of hand. Guns always win over fists. You might shoot a person once in self defense, not multiple times.

Google "officer shoots unarmed person". As you scroll down the list of the search result, pay attention to two things. First, the number of unarmed shootings and second the race of those victims. A research report in Psychological Science, The Consequences of Race for Police Officers' Responses to Criminal Suspects found that police officers were more likely to mistakenly shoot unarmed black suspects than unarmed white suspects. These are the results of putting police officers in an isolated room and showing them random pictures of college-aged males (equal numbers of black and white). In the picture the suspect was holding something, sometimes a gun, sometimes a wallet or cell phone. The interesting part about this study is that research noticed that officers exposed to the program over and over again lost their biases. This is strong evidence that these training programs should be mandated for all law enforcement officials.

I have never been a target of discrimination because of my race. I can't even begin to imagine what that's like for someone. And as a white woman, saying that I sympathize sounds inappropriate. No, my job as a white woman is to scream it from the mountain tops that this is unacceptable and that I do not condone or support or VOTE for people who allow intolerance in law enforcement agencies. It is my job to push for programs to educate police officers as well as people of the communities. At the end of the day ALL of us make up this country. There is no such thing as "those people" or "them". There is only "us". We are all just trying to live our lives, put food on the tables and roofs over our heads. All of us deserve to live our lives without fear that the people who are supposed to be protecting you are going to hurt you. All of us deserve to live our lives without fear.