chapter 559

June 15, 2020

Black Lives Matter

or misguided activism

End result of protests the hypocrite Mayor of Albany knuckled under to political correctness pressure and decided to remove statue of General Philip Schuyler from in front of City Hall because he owned some slaves. Forget that his prominent place in history was his military leadership at the decisive Battle of Saratoga during the Revolutionary War that formed this country. Absurd. Do we tear down the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial next. Are we to become like the Taliban blowing up centuries old Buddha statues in Afghanistan?

Apparently they will rename my Fort Gordon. I only recently realized Civil War General John Brown Gordon was quite an heroic figure in battle at Antietam and at Gettysburg and a later Senator. I don't particularly object to honoring warriors from the other side, they were Americans too. Should we tear down Vietnam Memorials because it was and unjust war? He is rumored to have been involved with the KKK but it is not entirely clear.

There is a legitimate reason to remove monuments that were purposely created to give credence for slave ownership. This very good video about Southern Societies rewriting confederate history. Schuyler's claim to fame was not slavery. When BLM attacks erroneously it creates an honest backlash that does harm to their legitimate underlying cause. A good but lengthy dissertation of barring true confederate symbols by the ACLU.

And so a million dollars damages was done via looting and fire bombing in the night after the protest marches. This in the same neighborhood where I worked retrieving criminal records at the Albany City Criminal Court. Definition of racism was modified a week ago to include systemic and institutionalized racism. Will the arrests of more black perpetrators from this damage merely enhance the false narrative that because there is an excess of black criminal cases it must be institutional racism rather than the fact that they are involved in more crime? Ninety percent of my prisoners in the cell block were black. I believe they were violating rules. When they show a great deal of lack of respect and resisting arrest it simply begets more harsh treatment. You can say it all stems from the underlying causes of oppression, yeah, but aim to correct those underlying causes, the cause not the effect. There is a semantics problem in all of this.

Black Lives Matter was painted on Lark Street beginning at the Waldorf Tuxedo Company where we rented in 1972. That message itself might seem racist to begin with and if you think or say white lives or all lives matter, you are a racist.

The Waldorf tuxedos were very spiffy for my groomsmen all in covid hairdos: bro in law Pete Kanches, Best Man college buddy John Kenna, myself, long time college buddy Pete France, and bro Bill. We were all military Veterans but I'm probably the only one who gets all the freebies on Vet's Day. Oh yeah, I will make the government pay. Perhaps they should rename this Lincoln room, Abe's father in law owned slaves.

This was a touching story in Schenectady. Johonna tried to break up a fight between protesters and an anti-protester. Later her car was torched. This again near City Court where I retrieved records. Her Great Uncle had become the Schenectady's first black Police Chief during my time on the job.

Another Schenectady story involves a young girl Zoe who lost her job at Proctors Theater and now calls it racist. Her FB rant is hard to watch with all the crying. Based on her (mental) fragility I suspect she is exaggerating the "micro aggressions" she claims. 

Are the protests doing more harm than good? Some changes are happening but seems to be mostly cosmetic knee jerk tangential stuff. Yeah, there are cases of police use of excessive force. But they aren't supposed to by regulations anyway and more whites are harmed by this than blacks. It's difficult to get a handle on the statistics. 

Systemic racism: you can call it that but it's more systemic inequity based on past true racism in the South. For thousands of years there have been slaves worldwide and more of them have been white. It's a whole societal thing here with education, standard of living, poverty, literacy, and true crime derived from old time slavery. Visit this great Slave Museum in Louisiana to see the roots of the problem. The BLM movement ought to be instead focusing on solving deeper issues rather than causing a lot of resentment on perceived issues that may be in fact false narratives.

So I ventured into Troy too to catch the action. Expected mucho damage that night but it didn't transpire. Police force was geared up and they arrested a few with "patriot" radicals with guns. I also retrieved records a few blocks away at the County Courthouse during my second career. I had my hard had, machete, and MP club in the truck just in case but parked on the outside and slowly approached the event. Actually the vibe was calm and good prior to the speeches, nice reggae style music. I left before the speeches and the Green Island Bridge was closing anyway.

Thought it would be minimal in my bucolic Clifton Park but no. There were a couple thousand turned out. Young and (easily swayed) fired up with a cause. Only went for the photo op but as they started to rant I couldn't even stay for 5 minutes. A mock of the Pledge of Allegiance, "all a lie", put and end to white supremacy and institutionalized racism. The black girl speaker was a Senior at what I'd call racially harmonious Shen, but had transferred in from racially challenged Newburg. I would have thought these people would be embarrassed to be there, but they all drink the kool-aid and even world wide. Yeah, the knee cop was bad but it's one case. The perp had a long rap sheet and many years in prison- not a saint (and not justification for killing him either).

Perhaps the time was ripe for mass gatherings. With the covid lockdown on for months and a lot of time on people's hands people were wanting to see some action. Couple that with many anti Trumpers and the readily available news in everyone's hands and on internet and cable TV you've got potential.

Big question is does the violence leave a lasting mark in peoples minds and lead to another Trump victory.

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