Black Lives Matter

"We all need to learn.  We all need to listen.  We all need to be a part of the solution.  We can do it peacefully together.” Tony Dungy

 

Those who disparage the slogan “Black Lives Matter” and counter with the argument that “All Lives Matter” don’t comprehend the necessity of making dramatic the point that the toll of African-American victims of police violence - and murder even – has become totally unacceptable.  Of course, all lives matter but until these killings cease the message of “Black Lives Matter” needs to be heard loud and clear.  As veteran Post-Tribune reporter John Mutka has written, in America all citizens are supposed to be created equal, but “unfortunately some are created more equal than others, especially where civil rights are concerned.”

Denzel Smith

On Facebook son Dave performed the Buffalo Springfield protest song “For What It’s Worth,” written by Stephen Stills, and dedicated it to Denzel Smith, a thoughtful, intelligent East Chicago Central grad now attending Bethune-Cookman University who has been grievously affected by the murder in Minneapolis of “gentle giant” George Floyd.  Calling Denzel a “brother from a different mother,” Dave introduced the song with these words: “It’s time to love each other, it’s time to listen to each other.  I stand with the young people in the streets.  Denzel Smith, I love you.”  “For What It’s Worth” begins with the line, “There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.” Another couplet goes, “A thousand people in the street, singing songs and carrying signs.”  And this verse:

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

 

Granddaughter Alissa called, conflicted about attending a peaceful rally in Grand Rapids scheduled to begin at 7 P.M.  In Valparaiso an 11 A.M. rally went peacefully, but both Toni and I counseled against being part of something at near dusk, when agitators on both the right and left were likely to foment trouble.  We called a few hours later and, finding nobody at home, left a message hoping to hear from her.  She called soon afterwards, having venture downtown with Josh and witnessed the rally from a distance. Next day, we learned that the protest had turned ugly with looting and the torching of police vehicles.  We were happy she was not caught up in it. Alissa posted this message:

    Don't be silent about the murder of George Floyd (and countless other black/brown people) and outraged at property damage. Be outraged at a justice system that has failed so many times that it makes people feel like rioting is the only choice. Be outraged at the silence from so many who should use their privilege for good.  I was proud to stand in solidarity with my city yesterday (from a social distance) and inspired to see all the protests around the country. Please everyone be safe (COVID is still here) and we need each other more than ever. Also, don't let the news coverage on the damage distract you - yesterday was a 99.9% peaceful gathering of people coming out in solidarity

After a couple days of uncertainty, authorities in Minneapolis and elsewhere are cracking down on protests, which continue to take place all over the nation. Even so, in many communities, officers have taken a knee to show solidarity with those mourning Floyd’s unnecessary death.  Locally, peaceful vigil took place in several other locations, but demonstrations that continued into the evening hours sometimes got ugly.  In Hobart stores got looted at Southlake Mall and demonstrators surged onto Route 30, stopping traffic.

Southlake Mall photo by Marc Chase

 In Hammond, Indiana, county police were on hand to prevent protestors from blocking the Frank Borman expressway (80/94). Former IUN colleague Linda Anderson reported:

Since this morning things have been other-worldly here.  From my window I have watched as police showed up to block access from Illinois into Hammond. Lots of police cruisers! Then an hour later came the big yellow road building equipment to block the road, and shortly after, they began placing large concrete barricades across the road. Then, arrived the National Guard. I could whistle and get their attention if needed, but other than assuming my sleep tonight will be punctuated with more sirens and the flashing red and blue lights through my windows, right here things seem calm, with an occasional driver honking in annoyance when they discover their route is blocked. My kids have offered I can come stay with them, but actually I feel fine being here. This morning there was rioting and looting at a shopping mall near here in Illinois so this is our city's response. Yesterday, tear gas/pepper spray was directed at a peaceful protest march in town. Very disappointing. I am hoping things cool down but not optimistic. I am in support of the protests and speaking out. Yet, as every newscast reports this is a systemic problem that must be solved I hear no real solutions and with the pandemic, unemployment sky high and a political stage that presents as a nightmare, it is going to take more effort and listening than this country has ever had to collect. Sadly, I am not sure we are up to the task. Too many politicians, religious leaders and educators unfortunately must have majored in "talk".

Hammond photos by Kyle Telechan

Trump continues to tweet incendiary comments about shooting looters and unleashing vicious dogs on citizens.  While he claimed to have talked to George Floyd’s family, a brother said the President never let them get a word in, whereas Joe Biden’s call lasted more than 30 minutes and was a true interchange. Floyd had worked as a bouncer at a conga Latin club and several people described him as a “gentle giant.”  The owner of the store where Floyd bought a pack of cigarettes with a counterfeit bill, not on the premises at the time, told reporters that Floyd was a regular customer who was unfailingly friendly and never gave anyone a hard time.  Vice President Mike Pence claims to believe in peaceful protest, drawing this retort from Ayo Edebiri: “Remember, Pence, when Colin Kaepernick peacefully protested and you stood your ass up and walked out of the stadium?”  Many have pointed out this hypocrisy and compared the NFL quarterback subsequently blackballed by NFL owners taking a knee to the Minneapolis cop killing George Floyd with his.

 

Evan Davis toured his neighborhood in the Fort Wayne area with a “Black Lives Matter” sign and reported:

  The Maplecrest walk with my Black Lives Matter sign went well. A former newspaper colleague and I walked for about half an hour and got no responses on the first half, but several on the way back, when we were facing oncoming traffic more directly. We got what we interpreted as three or four friendly beeps, plus a plea for All Lives Matter, a muttered reference to bovine feces and a long, loud beep accompanied by the middle-finger salute. If I do this again, I need to make a sturdier sign, but, otherwise, I figure at least a hundred people got to see two somewhat elderly (masked) white folks walking for racial justice in the heart of St. Joe Township. I hope we gave them something to talk about. ... Meanwhile, I think a couple of my Aboite Township friends were doing a neighborhood walk near their home. I'm looking forward to their report.

 

Brittany Schoel filed this report from Flint, Michigan:

    We weren't sure what to expect. With everything we have been seeing on the news, it wasn't clear what would happen but as we were walking, it was beautiful to see people of every race, age, demographic come together and unite.

    When we reached the police station, the officers were lined up and everyone immediately took a knee.

    The Sheriff asked one question...

    “We are mad, too! What can we do?"

     And the crowd responded, "Join us.’”

 

WLS news team, Coleman on left

 We’ve had ideal weather over the weekend, sunny, low humidity, and in the low 70s – perfect for getting out of the house and joining a Black Lives Matter demonstration.  As legendary ABC Chicago meteorologist John Coleman would say, “Today was one of the ten best weather days of the year.” During the 1970s the Channel 7 news team of Fahey Flynn, John Drury, Joel Daly, and sportscaster Bill Frink (plus my favorite Mark Giangreco) was number one, even surpassed the Channel 2 team of Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson. They had so much rapport that some accuse them with popularizing a news "happy talk" format. After playing a major role in launching the Weather Channel, Coleman was chief meteorologist on ABC’s “Good Morning America” before ending his career at a San Diego station. Coleman is credited with creating the first chroma key weather map. He died in 2018 at age 83.

 

 Walt Whitman

Ray Boomhower passed on this advice from poet Walt Whitman:

  This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

Bohemians

“Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.”  Mark Twain

Mark Twain

At Westchester Library looking for Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “The Bully Pulpit,” I got on a waiting list and then spotted Ben Tarnoff’s “The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers who Reinvented American Literature.”  On the back was a blurb by Goodwin, who declared: "What an ingenious idea for a book and what a rousing story!"  One close friend of Twain’s was Bret Harte, who like him, Ben Franklin, and Walt Whitman, once was a printer’s apprentice (Franklin called the experience “the poor man’s college”).  Two other California writers who became protégés of Twain and Harte were poets Ina Coolbrith and Charles Warren Stoddard (like Whitman a homosexual, although the term wasn’t used during the 1860s).  While the group broke away from the over-refined style of New York and New England literary giants, they identified with a group of New York literary rebels who called themselves Bohemians.  Tarnoff concluded that for Bret Harte and the others “Bohemia” “came to represent a creative alternative to the mundane and the mercenary in American life, a way to overcome California’s crude materialism.”  Harte himself wrote: “Bohemia has never been located geographically, but any clear day when the sun id going down, if you mount Telegraph Hill, you shall see its pleasant valleys and cloud-capped hills glittering in the West like the Spanish castles of Titbottom.”

Though the word Bohemian was first used in France early in the nineteenth century to describe artists and writers who lived outside the margins of conventional society, I first heard the word used to describe the so-called beats who lived in NYC’s Greenwich Village, hung out in coffeehouses, smoked dope, and, like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, thumbed their noses at bourgeois society.

A committee has selected three nominees for its “One Book … One Campus … One Community” initiative.  Several folks nominated Anne Balay’s “Steel Closets,” but there was no way that was going to happen – too embarrassing given Anne’s termination.  Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow,” which Anne used in last summer’s Gender Studies class, is one of them.  It deals with the unfair legal system that punishes African Americans far worse than others and how the War on Drugs has targeted blacks and deprived millions of their freedom (more blacks are in jail today than were slaves in 1850).  The others are Ntozake Shange’s “Betsey Brown,” a Young Adult novel about an African-American seventh grader growing up in St. Louis during the 1950s, and “Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families,” edited by Andrew Carroll.  If I had a vote, it would be for “The New Jim Crow.”

Anne Balay at Cornell discussing "Steel Closets"; photo by Riva Lehrer

Anne Balay is back from her book tour. In putting together an article about her tenure case, I came upon this teaching statement she wrote for her dossier: “I love my students, I let them know I care, I drive them crazy, I make them work, and their success is all the reward I need.  First, they create the magical space that is the classroom, a place where interactions with texts, with ideas, and with other learners is central.  Secondly, they grow.  The look in their eyes when their mind first wraps around an alien concept, or when they synthesize disparate ideas to create an independent insight, or when they think analytically about something they’ve never noticed before and, almost in shock, notice that critical thinking has become a habit – this look of pride is teaching’s main reward.”

NWI Times photo by Jon L. Hendricks

We’re used to reading stories about oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, but one occurred Monday afternoon when a malfunction at BP’s Whiting Refinery, which a spokesman called a “processing disruption,” sent oil into Lake Michigan.  Clean-up crews arrived early Tuesday morning, and EPA and IDEM officials were on the scene.  No word on how much oil spilled into the lake.

IUN has set up a Redhawks Athletics Hall of Fame, and one of the first honorees is Linda Anderson, the university’s first director of athletics.  Pleased to have been selected, Linda said, “I have many fond remembrances of my time at IUN, and many friends from that time who are still dear to me: staff, coaches, faculty and players. It takes a special kind of person to do what is required to be a student athlete and I have a great deal of respect for students who can manage to juggle studies, home and athletics. I saw my role as to facilitate the dreams of the students.”  Also honored, longtime announcer Chuck Gallmeier.

IU Press editor-in-chief Robert Sloan asked if I’d take a look at James Madison’s forthcoming “Hoosiers: A New History of Indiana” and possibly write a short review.  I’m very excited to see it because his previous book, “The Indiana Way: A State History,” the standard text in the field, came out 28 years ago.  From being in touch with Madison over the past few years, I know how hard he’s worked, including taking pains not to neglect Northwest Indiana.

I have ugly red marks on my right leg from scratching it during the night and breaking the skin, something I’ve done to my face but not my limbs.  Do I need to wear kid gloves to bed, I wonder.

Forming Acting Chancellor Lloyd Rowe, 84, passed away.  Lloyd had that rare ability to get along with everyone yet get things done.  During the brief time he ran IUN after Peggy Elliott left, he got smoking banned and allowed a half-dozen vacant positions in Arts and Sciences to be filled.  Serving in the Political Science Department with cantankerous Jean Poulard and curmudgeon George Roberts, he got along with both and helped launch the School of Public and Environmental Affairs.  He was a consummate gentleman and, like most of our successful administrators a home-grown product associated with the campus for 35 years.