Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Fear of the Police

Many years ago, the Cold War was still hot actually, I was at a party of some sort and met a young man who was newly in this country from Poland, which was still behind the Iron Curtain at the time. I asked him what most impressed him about this country, and he didn’t even have to stop and think before he answered, “You don’t have to be afraid of the police.”

As I have watched the news lately, of events in Ferguson MO, and the protests of Black Lives Matter, that event has popped into my mind. If your skin is not the right color in this country, you do have to be afraid of the police.

What must it be like to live in a nation which talks about itself the way this nation does, using words like “freedom” and “opportunity,”  when you live as people did in Poland under the bootheel of the Soviet Union, afraid of police?

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