This summer has proven to be a rough ride — one that shows no sign of smoothing out anytime soon.
Widespread anger hangs as heavily as the dripping humidity in this season’s superheated air. We even politicize and argue over whether the weather’s a random occurrence or Exhibit A for global warming.
Murderers assassinate police officers in planned attacks or spontaneous, violent eruptions.
Many blame Black Lives Matter activists, who’ve largely demonstrated peacefully, even as looters and arsonists have at times opportunistically struck during protests.
Largely ignored in all the shouting is the encouraging fact that BLM’s leaders have largely echoed law-and-order types in condemning the violence against police in Baton Rouge, Dallas and elsewhere.
In a similar matter, the incessant march of global terror attacks are in dangerous range of achieving their targeted goal of instilling a disquieting panic in the U.S. and the rest of the freedom-loving world. The nervous angst of a fretful populace draws eyes and attention away from those who seek to publicize sporadic, questionable behavior by police, such as the shooting of an unarmed black man last week in North Miami who was attempting to aid an autistic man.
If we’re ever to make headway on solving the multiple challenges that vex this society and world, we have to find a way to simply hear what differing people of goodwill are saying.
Toward that goal, we present here today three voices offering varying opinions on the nettlesome juncture where police-community relations, and race, can at times traumatically intersect. Listening and hearing can inform and aid the quest for solutions, we believe. Hopefully, we can all agree that equitable solutions are urgently needed.
