Friday’s will look a bit different here during the month of July. I am traveling over the next three weeks so accomplishing food and photos will be impossible. Rather than leaving my faithful partner to do all of the cooking by herself this month, we decided to take a break from recipes and give you Food (for thought) Fridays. You will hear from me today and on July 22; on the alternate Fridays, you will hear from Tracey. In August, we’ll resume our regularly scheduled programming - food photos and recipes.
I had my thoughts collected and ready to go for today, and then last night happened…
Last evening Weber and I went with my youngest daughter for the second round of wedding dress shopping. We stopped for a late dinner before picking up my oldest daughter from work at 9pm. As we pulled into our driveway, I got an emergency alert message from the Dallas County Community College district, for whom I teach, saying that one of our campuses was on lockdown due to of police activity in the area. This was not the campus on which I teach, but it was a little unnerving. Yesterday was the final day of the first summer term. I wondered, had a student “lost it” over a final exam? And then social media went crazy. Things in downtown Dallas were much more serious than a distraught student. We sat down in our recliners and turned on the TV, and remained glued to it until nearly 3am.
The mayhem began at the conclusion of a peaceful protest around the recent police shootings of young African American males by white police officers in other parts of the country. The Dallas protest was calm and upbeat. Though there were a hundred Dallas police officers in the vicinity of the protest march, they were not dressed in riot gear, but rather in their summer uniforms like they would be for any other July evening in Dallas. Rather than an “us against them” atmosphere, the march through downtown was one where law enforcement and citizens who want to see justice for all came together.
The march concluded and the gunfire began.
For several hours, statistics changed constantly. Multiple shooters, two shooters, one officer down, five officers down, one officer deceased, two innocent bystanders shot, two suspects under arrest, a photo of a person of interest was released, a chase occurred and two more people were detained, the person of interest was questioned and released, ten officers down and three deceased, there are bombs all over downtown Dallas, a shooter is cornered and police are negotiating…
After six log hours, when all was said and done, five law enforcement officers had been killed and seven more were injured. Two bystanders were shot but sustained non-life threatening injuries. And the whole incident was the work of one lone gunman, one assassin who had carefully planned, calculated and executed an attack that specifically targeted white police officers.
In light of recent police actions in our country, this man’s anger is certainly justified, but his actions are not.
I don’t want to get into a debate about gun rights, but I do want to state some facts. First of all, I am in favor of the strictest gun laws possible. That said, I know that many, many people disagree with me. That’s OK. I am willing to agree to disagree. However, for those who think that if the general public is armed, there are more people to take down “the bad guys,” let’s look at last night’s incident on the streets of downtown Dallas.
Milling about the march route, there were one hundred or more armed law enforcement officers and one lone sniper. Thirteen people were shot, five fatally. Of those thirteen shot, eleven were armed officers trained to use their weapons under these circumstances. Were there also armed citizens on the streets of Dallas last night? You bet. Did any of them fire their weapons? Not that has been reported. What did some of them do? As soon as the first shots rang out, they found the nearest police officer and handed over their guns. Why? So that they wouldn’t be mistaken for the actual shooter. A wise move, especially since the video of such an exchange that has surfaced is of a young African American man handing over a weapon that he was carrying openly and legally to an officer. I applaud him for that though I know his actions were motivated by fear, the very fear which sparked the evening’s rally in the first place. Oh, I should add that it was a picture of this young man that was the first released as “a person of interest.” Fortunately, someone had the cell phone video showing him handing over his gun as the gunshots were echoing through the downtown streets.
Since today’s post is entitled food for thought, I invite you to think about this: if one hundred armed and highly trained law enforcement officers lost so many of their own to the trigger of a single sniper, what makes any of us think that a terrified school teacher with a handgun in her desk drawer could thwart an incident like Sandy Hook? Or, a college freshman who may think himself invincible could prevent any of the increasing numbers of shootings on college campuses? Lets be realistic…the odds are not in the average citizen’s favor. Admittedly, like the lottery, there is that 1 in 227,000,000 chance where things may work out differently.
All of this hits way too close to home for me The place downtown where all of these events took place is fifteen miles from my house and not far from the downtown arts district, an area where I have found myself many times in the evening. The stand-off with police concluded in the parking garage of one of our sister campuses. Students like I see every day and faculty members who are my colleagues were huddled in bathrooms for hours not knowing what was going on around them. It is all very surreal and absolutely real at the same time.
In the light of a new day, the people have come together. Our community is rallying around the Dallas police and there has been an outpouring of love and support for the families of the fallen officers. Barriers of race, religion, gender, age, socioeconomic standing have all been broken down as the city of Dallas unites and begins the process of healing.
This is an unstable and scary world that we live in right now. Not just here in Dallas. Everywhere. Last night’s mass shooting happened on the streets of Dallas, but it could just as easily been on the streets of your city. These widespread feelings of fear and uncertainty can not and must not be blamed on any one segment of our population. It is a national crisis, one in which we have all, every single person who calls the United States home, had a part in creating, either by our actions or our inactions. The bright spot here is that we all also have the capacity to either hinder or remedy the current climate in this country by the choices we make in terms of our own inaction and action.
For now, please send your thoughts and prayers to Dallas, a city that stands tall amidst hurt and hope, sorrow and strength, pain and possibility, and darkness and light. Thank you.
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