By Lynn Kellogg
Amid extreme unrest, a protester’s sign in Minnesota hit home, “History is Screaming – Are you Listening?”
So many ideas flashed through my head of the hard-fought gains and values we as a people had come to trust. Loss of treasured freedoms are being felt throughout the country. Loss of human and civil rights, states’ rights, the right to speak, the right to due process, the right to safety in one’s home. In the case of immigrants, we changed policies and protections to declare tax paying workers waiting for the legal process or giving up on a broken system “criminals”, when we need them to stay.
Unchecked power is causing fear, unnecessary violence, even death. Resistance to unfairness is met with harsher violence.
Here at the beginning of Black History Month, the parallels in the struggle for human rights between our past and present feel unavoidable, only this time Blacks aren’t the focus.
I was going to write about issues like recent efforts to playdown Black history such as the attempted removal of key depictions of Harriet Tubman from the Smithsonian and the National Park Service’s website, a proposed change to an outdoor monument to remove a listing of slaves’ names owned by George Washington when moving to his presidential residence, or the removal of MLK Day and Juneteenth from the list of national holiday free entry days to our National Parks, to be replaced by the President’s birthday. But I’m not going there for now.
Alan Spears, Senior Director of Cultural Affairs for the National Parks and Conservation Association comments, “Great countries don’t hide from their history”. America’s treatment of Native Americans, Blacks, Japanese following WWII, and now immigrants are dark periods. Martin Luther King viewed truth, not violence, as essential for justice and peace. Our historians have helped us learn and move forward.
America’s history of Black resilience to oppression is impressive and successful in birthing a civil rights movement of reforms. Non-partisan and non-violent resistance movements like Indivisible and others strive to mimic the success of Martin Luther King and our history of Black and White coming together to uphold our individual freedoms.
Participants in most demonstrations, however, have been white. A recent Detroit Free Press article interviewed Black leaders to understand better the potential for unity in approach.
Primary reasons for not participating included fear that participation might increase violence against protesters, or danger to oneself in racial profiling, or a feeling that this was a white fight aiming to return to status quo. Protests have a purpose, but commonly stated objectives are the true rallying points.
That said, fighting racism, white supremacy and a slip into fascism are powerful unifying points. It’s recognized that white protesters can carry messages to different tables of influence. The Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit NAACP said, “We’re at a moment where we need every tool in a toolbox, and so I think everybody can find a place in the resistance.”
A member of the Detroit Community Action Committee, a group vocal about making Detroit a sanctuary city said, “If it takes a majority of White crowds out there to get things done, if that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes.”
Tristan Taylor, a leader of Detroit Will Breathe organized participation in October’s No Kings Day and has been at the forefront, rallying publicly since the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis. He said, “There is a push to unify underway, and that unions, churches, city leaders and traditional civil rights leaders need to take up the cause”. This is encouraging.
Of course we don’t want criminals in our country. Indeed, recent Presidents from both parties have deported hundreds of thousands, even millions of persons during their terms without the violence, absence of due process and police state tactics now in play, most using a priority system of gauging threat to the country.
There’s a right way and a wrong way to get things done.
Lynn Kellogg is former CEO of Region IV Area Agency on Aging in Southwest Michigan. Questions on age or independence services? Call the Info-Line for Aging & Disability at 800-654-2810 or visit areaagencyonaging.org. The Generations column appears each weekend in The Herald-Palladium.