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If We Must Die
By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, D.Min.
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,….. Pressed to the wall,
dying, but fighting back!
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Claude McKay (1919)
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Rev. Donald L. Perryman, D.Min.
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Crisis has a way of testing us, for character cannot be hid
in an exigency or emergency but will always tell us
something about the type of individual, community or society
we are. Yet, that principle itself rests upon another truth
which armchair quarterbacks and/or castigating pundits
usually miss, which is that there should result from the
crisis thrust upon us, lessons which we perhaps could not
and would not have learned except for the experience of the
immediate urgency. If allowed to be instructive, these
lessons place a “stamp upon our nature” and become more
lasting than the original drama from which they sprang.
The police and autopsy reports from the fatal shooting of
mentally ill 62 year old Linda Hicks by police, were
released following a firearms review board hearing last
week, according to The Blade. Predictably, the board ruled
that the shooting was justified, concluding that the police
officer acted in self-defense. Earlier, a Lucas County grand
jury declined to indict the officer, Diane Chandler, on a
charge of murder with a gun specification.
If we are ever to get beyond the lambastic F### -The-Police
rhetoric of the black community, the racist and patriarchal
projection of blame upon the local Mental Health board
leadership, the dysfunctional denial of the police
department and an overly-critical but predictable and
unimaginative public, then we need to refocus the energy of
our frustrations upon the lessons revealed by this tragedy.
The revelations are many, however a few of the painful
disclosures would have to include the following:
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YES, THERE IS A PROBLEM between the Toledo Police
Department and the African-American community!
The relationship is frayed and the October 15, 2005 riot in
North Toledo was more than just about Neo-Nazis or gangs.
Four years later, hard feelings still exist. The return of
Officer Chandler to her pre-incident assignment in the inner
city is perceived as an arrogant sign of disrespect and
compounds this problem.
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Since the public did not witness the incident, there
will always be questions that may never be answered.
These questions should cause us to put ourselves in the
shoes of Officer Chandler but must not omit other difficult
questions including the possibility of perceived
self-defense and self-preservation on the part of Linda
Hicks.
Recently, the Supreme Court – according to Justice John Paul
Stevens, “overreached by throwing out earlier Supreme Court
decisions that had not been at issue” in order to give
corporations First Amendment freedom of speech rights by
granting big business the extraordinary power (at the
expense of the marginalized) to spend unrestrained amounts
of money to support or oppose political candidates. Then
certainly there exists - whether with a hand under a pillow
in one’s own bedroom: “The right of people to be secure in
their persons, houses and effects against unreasonable
searches and seizures which shall not be violated, and no
warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by
Oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to
be searched and the persons or things to be seized.”
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It’s the “same-o, same-o in Toled-o.
We have been adept, poetic, creative, artistic and
inspirational in rhetorically voicing our frustrations but
woefully impotent and inadequate in obtaining facts or
imagining solutions. What do independent facts say?
Has anyone asked for them? Has anyone looked for
themselves? Can we utilize our verbal creativity and
dexterity to come up with innovative solutions to recommend
that might reduce the chances of this type of tragedy from
being repeated in the future?
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The call must go out for the aggressive recruitment of
more black police officers.
As the few existing African-American officers age and
retire, they are being increasingly placed by those who do
not look like the community they serve and who do not have
the same degree of cultural competency which increases the
chances for similar incidents in the future.
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Police do not get the appreciation that they deserve.
The safety forces that come to work are thrust almost
unfairly, at the epicenter of demoralized, hopeless
communities created by the de-institutionalization of the
mentally ill and a generation of black youth barred
educationally and economically from the mainstream and left
with nothing but dope to sell. Our anger has to be
rechanneled from the police into the initiative to
collectively advocate for jobs, quality education and
against policies and court decisions which place power in
markets and corporations rather than in governments and
citizens.
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No one wants to die horribly.
In the end, all of us – black and white, police and citizens
– merely want to be respected as individuals.
Finally,
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The fight for justice, dignity, respect and basic human
rights is a life and death struggle. “If we must die,
let us nobly die,… fighting back”, and having “stopped
talking about it and started being about it!”
Contact
Rev. Dr. Donald Perryman at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
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