Submitted by Carolyn Rogerson
There are days when I cannot believe the vitriol to be read on the pages of Coronado publications or online. I have also been surprised to read there are so many mind-readers and clairvoyants living in Coronado. Oddly these ‘gifted’ folks only seem to be able to interpret negative intentions and attributes. Don’t they ever see goodness, anything positive, and some well meaning intentions in their crystal balls?
Recently the ‘woke’ trend casting a pall over the nation is to describe our almost one million law enforcement officers as demons and monsters. As with every group, even among the ‘woke’, there are bad people who do evil things. Only a very evil person would intentionally point a laser at another person’s eyes. Three law enforcement officers may be permanently blinded by vicious rioting demonstrators in Portland, who did just that. Do you really want to live in a city or state without laws and those willing to enforce them? Could it be that some citizens of Coronado who complain that not enough police are citing or stopping speeders and traffic scofflaws are the very ones who now want to defund the police? Some want social workers, instead of the police, to go to scenes of “non violent domestic abuse”. Exactly what is non-violent domestic abuse? Have you asked the abused? How do you know it is non violent until you go there? Have you asked social workers if they are willing to go to these situations without law enforcement? In the past six months, Police officers were killed answering a domestic dispute call. Another was killed dealing with a mental impairment call.
Are all the citizens of Coronado aware that the city pays to have a shelter bed available 24/7? The homeless situation is a tragedy. More homelessness is not the solution. When Coronado’s police men and women encounter an apparent homeless person, they take the time to have a dialogue. That person is encouraged to take the opportunity to go to that shelter. There they will not only be given a clean bed but a decent meal or two and counseling. If it takes more than ten minutes of encouragement, should you really describe that as harassment? If you couldn’t hear the conversation, why decide it was harassment? That speaks sad volumes about you. Could it not have been compassion you witnessed?
Since the beginning of 2020, members of law enforcement have been killed in the line of duty in the United States. Some ambushed in cold blooded murder. On Saturday, July 18th, 52 police officers in Chicago were injured by lethal projectiles and sharpened pvc pipe wielded as spears. If you don’t think frozen bottles of liquid, rocks and bricks are lethal weapons, volunteer to have one thrown at your head.
Shockingly, many democrat mayors, officials and some media described those as a peaceful protests. Our law enforcement have been called stormtroopers by those who have 24/7 security paid for by us taxpayers. Over 65 days of mayhem, arson and destruction in Portland is also being described as peaceful demonstrating. If hundreds of protesters throwing Molotov cocktails, bricks, balloons filled with kerosene, and commercial grade fire works accompanied by continual shouting, positioned themselves in your neighborhood, would you describe it as peaceful? I call it violent rioting. Perhaps I am not ‘woke’ enough. Even the Portland Police Department has finally had to officially declare the arson and explosive demonstrations to be riots.
Some say it is only a building, black lives matter more. I agree, except those Minneapolis and Baltimore buildings housed, provided jobs, groceries, life saving prescriptions and other essentials for black children, mothers, fathers and elderly. They didn’t ask to have their neighborhoods destroyed. Would you? Could the life of one black baby murdered in Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Kansas City and elsewhere have been saved by a burning building? Is it brave and meaningful to destroy, burn down and loot? These same ‘brave’ people could be standing guard on the streets of those cities where the lives of black children and adults are taken daily. That would be meaningful. Holding a sign isn’t brave. Walking beside a child in a dangerous neighborhood is brave. Perhaps the Alliance of Concerned Men of Washington, DC deserves more attention than other, more vociferous groups. Check out the Alliance.
When remembering and praying for deceased black lives, please add these names to your signs:
Deval Gardner, age 1, shot in his stomach, sitting in his stroller in a park, Sincere Gaston, age 1, shot in his chest while buckled in his car seat. Also shot to death were Mikhi James age 3, Natalia Wallace age 7, Secoria Turner age 8, Natalia Wallace age 7, Devon McNeal age 11, Royta DeMarco Giles age 8, Lena Nunez age 10, D.J. Lane age 16, Vernado Jones Jr. age 14, Marlin Gaines age 15, and LeGend Taliferro age 4, killed when shots ripped thru the walls of the apartment where he slept. Ten month old Bishop Ford, riding in her infant car seat, was shot in her shoulder. Janari Andre Ricks, age 9 died after being shot in his chest as he played near his home.
Pray too for Civil Rights Leader and Congressman John Lewis who said, “Never give up. Never give in. Never become hostile….Hate is too big a burden to bear.”
Alvida King, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr. asked that we, “educate ourselves and learn the difference between the black lives matter movement and the organization” calling itself BLM. There is a significant distinction between the two.
Carolyn Rogerson
