Post 96 - June 15, 2020

Day 96…

It’s seems impossible, after more than two weeks of vivid worldwide demonstrations, with everybody’s attention firmly focused on the issue of the use of excessive force by our local police departments against people of color, but another black man has been shot and killed by a white policeman.

On Friday night in Atlanta, Rayshard Brooks was asleep in his car which was blocking the drive-thru lane at a Wendy’s restaurant. Officer Devin Brosnan approached the car with his body cam on. The video shows Brosnan trying to wake him. Mr. Brooks is clearly under the influence of something and has a lot of trouble coming to.  Finally, Mr. Brooks is awake enough to be able to move his car out of the lane into a parking space.

Throughout all of this, Rayshard Brooks stays calm and, within the bounds of his inebriation, cooperative. Officer Brosnan stays calm and polite. Officer Brosnan, at this point, calls in to get another officer to come and issue a DUI test.

Officer Garrett Rolfe arrives. Once there, Mr. Brooks gets out of the car. Officer Rolfe gives Mr. Brooks a breathalyzer test and pats him down. Mr. Brooks explains that yes, he had been drinking and that it’s his daughter’s birthday.  Rolfe asks him to put his hands behind his back and starts to cuff him. When that happens, Mr. Brooks starts struggling and Officer Rolfe tells him to stop or else he’ll get Tased.

There is a struggle during which Mr. Brooks grabs the Taser and runs away. From the security camera footage at the Wendy’s you can see that both men now have Tasers. Officer Rolfe fires his at the fleeing Rayshard Brooks. Mr. Brooks turns around, and, as he’s running, lifts up the Taser he has in his hand and shoots back at which point Garrett Rolfe pulls out his gun and shoots him three times.

Rayshard Brooks was taken to a hospital where he died from the bullet wounds.

A Taser is not considered a deadly weapon. Rayshard Brooks had been patted down, so Rolfe knew that he was not carrying a concealed weapon. Rayshard Brooks was running AWAY.

This war is not over.

Michael and I have been watching a TV series called Mrs. America about the fight to get the ERA or Equal Rights Amendment to the constitution ratified during the Women’s Liberation Movement. Spoiler alert, it never happened.

The ERA was first proposed in 1923. It was designed to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex in all matters pertaining to divorce, property, employment and other matters. It would provide for legal equality between the sexes. There are laws, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that offer protections against discrimination on the basis of sex, but the amendment sought to create a blanket constitutional umbrella that would remove any possible loopholes.

With the rise of the Women’s Movement in the 1960’s the proposed amendment was finally introduced in Congress where it passed in 1971. It then went on to the Senate where it also passed in 1972. It was then up to the states to ratify the amendment. 38 states were needed before the ERA became an official addendum to the US Constitution.

On January 15 of this year, 2020, while the first reports of COVID 19 were starting to come in from Wuhan, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment. Finally, after nearly fifty years, the number of states needed to ratify had been achieved. Virginia’s ratification, unfortunately, was almost completely symbolic because the deadline (1982) had long since passed.

It would take both Congress and the Senate to be willing to reopen the discussion. The Republican controlled Senate has already said that they would be unlikely to consider it. Additionally, five states, Idaho, Kentucky, Nebraska, Tennessee and South Dakota voted to rescind their ratifications of the amendment. It isn’t clear, however whether a state can actually do that once they have signed off.

So, in 2020, nearly fifty years after the push to correct this, men and women are still not considered equal in the eyes of the law in the United States. Like almost everything else that we are facing these days, support of the ERA split fairly clearly down party lines. Democrats for, Republicans against.

This war is not over either.

This morning, the United States Supreme Court, voted on a set of landmark LGBTQ cases.

The first set of cases involved gay men who claimed they had been fired because of their sexual orientation. Bostock v. Clayton County, was about Gerald Bostock, who was terminated from his job in a government program that supports neglected and abused children. Mr. Bostock, who is gay, had joined a gay softball league and once that became known, he was let go.

The other case was Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda in which Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor was fired after a complaint from a female client. She objected to being tethered to a man during a tandem dive and complained when Mr. Zarda assured her that it was fine because he was 100% gay.

The second case, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission concerned Aimee Stephens who was fired from her job at a Michigan funeral home when she told them that she was transgender and would start working in women’s clothing.

The Supreme Court in a 6-3 vote, ruled that in all of those cases, both sexual identity and gender identity were inextricably linked to sex, therefore, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits sex discrimination also applies to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

This is a massive victory in the LGBTQ fight for equality and cause for celebration.

But this war is also far from being over. Change is slow.

Our psyches are wired to accept the status quo. One of the reasons that we all find it so difficult to lose weight is that once you live at a certain weight level for a while, your body starts to consider that that’s where it should be. When you lose the unwanted weight, your body reacts as if something is wrong and does what it can to get back up to that “normal” heavier level. Losing weight is hard - keeping it off is even harder because of that. You need to get down to where you want to be and STAY there long enough for the body to start to adjust and accept that lighter level as the new “normal”.

Gloria Steinem was one of the women in the forefront of the struggle for equal rights. She started Ms. Magazine to give women’s voices a chance to be heard. She was in her thirties when the fight to get states to ratify the ERA began.

Gloria Steinem is now 86 years old and her life’s work of fifty years and counting has not been completed.

The killing of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta on Friday is a vivid indication of just how long a road ahead of us in terms of racial justice we really have.

With all of the conscious awareness that every police department must have these days against the use of excessive force, when placed in that situation Officer Rolfe’s basic instinct caused him to pull out his gun and fire. He cannot possibly have been unaware of the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, but in the moment, he went right for his gun.

Our minds can readily accept the idea of Black Lives Matter but really convincing our hearts and bodies to make it a natural part of who we are is going to take a lot of time and a lot of work.

Black Lives Matter. Women’s Lives Matter. LGBTQ Lives Matter.

The fights continue and these wars may never be fully won. We are fighting multiple wars on multiple fronts and we likely will be doing so for the rest of our lives. We have to keep going. We can’t ever give up.

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” -Samuel Beckett -