About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (June 3, 2020)
11A OPINION ®he £ntics gainesvilletimes.com Midweek Edition - June 3-4, 2020 Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com Submit a letter: letters@gainesvilletimes.com The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. LITERS Old Joe should be moved for his protection I have no quarrel with Old Joe nor with the UDC who purchased him for the county. Indeed, one branch of the “great-great-grand” generation of my family served the CSA; a young man died while doing so. No, I wish to see Old Joe moved for his safety. I will also explain that regardless of mat ters of history or genealogy, dead men, and the statues thereof, do not trouble me. The men are dead. The statues are bronze or stone. And if the truth is to be told, then we must admit these statues are largely ignored and serve only to draw casual interest — or to draw the ire of people who are apparently afraid of statues and thus seek to damage or destroy them. Truly, the greatest threat and danger from any statue is that a great wind or wave should topple one onto the top of one’s body! As for the psychology of the matter, I can assure the reader that damaging or destroy ing a statue does nothing at all to engender kinder thoughts from one’s supposed oppo nent. In fact, I can assure you such acts only serve to create further discord and even hatred. Yes, the very same sentiments can be said for forcing removal of a statue. And do not think that cannot be done here. Old Joe needs to be moved to the grounds of a museum, dedicated park or cemetery in the hopes that by doing so, he will not be irrepa rably damaged or even destroyed. Old Joe needs to be moved while those who still care for him can control the manner and location to which he is removed. The time is coming when he will either be moved or destroyed, and we’ve a chance to protect him by acting now. Vicki Bentley Flowery Branch He’s guarded over our square and didn’t provoke this crime I wish to report a crime against a most revered citizen of Gainesville. He is a person who happens to be a beauti ful shade of bronze. He never served in the military but has rep resented countless Hall County veterans. He has been in Gainesville for over a cen tury and a survivor of the tornado of 1936. He has attended every event on the Gaines ville square including the Mule Camp Market and chicken festivals. He has stood behind the men and women of law enforcement. He has never uttered a single insult or com ment against any race, creed, sex or individ ual since his existence. He has guarded over the Gainesville square without ever receiving one paycheck or stimulus. For a crime he had no involvement in what soever, he was vandalized and attacked with spray paint. The attack was unprovoked with out cause or reason. I feel that the victim here, Old Joe, deserves all the protection any citizen of Gainesville deserves and more. He was peacefully mind ing his own business carrying out his daily duties of guarding the square. I would like to pay respect to my friend Ole Joe. Barry Colbaugh Gainesville Best way to revive economy is give money to unemployed The quickest and likely only way to revive the economy: Give large amounts of money to the unemployed. Basically, replace their income until they get another job. Since the U.S. economy is driven by con sumption, the only way to fix it is to massively stimulate consumption. The Federal Reserve has protected the rich by allowing them to borrow all the money they need for free (near zero interest on bor rowed money.) But the rich do not actually consume much. They invest. But there is nothing real to invest in since there is no demand for prod uct because of all the unemployed who do not have money to buy product. Since there is nothing real to invest in, the rich play with their money instead. They buy exotic financial instruments instead of real productive things. They buy hedge funds, credit default swaps, bitcoins, gold and all the other get rich quick schemes by “playing with money.” Do not worry about the national debt at a time like this. In fact, stop tying the nation’s debt to government bonds. Just give the money away by printing it and giving to the unemployed for free. Do not increase the national debt. If inflation becomes a serious problem in the future, then just take some of the money away. The only way to revive the economy is to give money to the unemployed. Large amounts of money. They will spend it imme diately, much in their local community, for things that they need. But for some reason a lot of people do not see this. For some reason they want to pun ish the unemployed for not having a job when they lost it through no fault of their own. Incredible. Frank W. Gilkeson Dahlonega Note to readers Dick Yarbrough’s column will publish in the Saturday edition this week. Pray to break blue line of loyalty keeping bad officers in uniform Spend enough time ham mering on keyboards for news organizations and you are going to build a pretty eclectic library of menial images. Some heart breaking, some awe inspiring, some tragic, but all memories you aren’t likely to forget. One of those has been at the forefront the last few days, despite being more than 30 years old. In January of 1987, Forsyth County found itself an unfortunate battle ground for civil rights activists and white supremacists, with a massive civil rights march undertaken after a smaller previous demonstration was ended by name-calling, bottle-throwing Neanderthals. The bright, clear winter day saw hordes of people descend on the small downtown area of Cumming: civil rights marchers, white power groups, journalists from all over the world, and a massive assortment of law enforcement officers and National Guards men from everywhere in the state. It was a long day, with a phalanx of offi cers forced to stand in formation along the city’s streets for hours awaiting the arrival of busloads of marchers who ultimately would make the trek into town and around the courthouse square, then back to their buses following speeches from a variety of dignitaries. The hours-long wait for the arrival of the marchers was a tense one, with angry white supremacists becoming increasingly aggressive as the day wore on. Local officials feared that if the march didn’t start and end before dark, problems would escalate. The three-deep rows of law enforcement officers stood in formation all day, holding their ground and creating a cleared path for those who would eventually march. What was expected to happen by late morning still had not begun by mid-afternoon, and still the gauntlet of uniformed protection waited. Among those officers was a member of the Georgia State Patrol, whose name I never learned. Like all the others, he was in full riot gear, prepared for the worst while likely hoping for the best, sweating despite the cool ness of January. He was a mas sive man, with a build you would expect to see on a football field. And he was black. The image I will never forget is him stand ing there, hour after hour, as rabid bigots screamed at him, calling him vile names, questioning his heritage, his family, his honor. If he heard himself called by N-word once, he heard it 100 times. And he stood there. Never twitched. Never responded. Never made a move. Never forgot the training and the discipline that went with his job, despite being more than equipped to do battle with any of the loud-mouthed troublemakers who screamed at him, some so close their spittle hit his plas tic shield. It was the most amazing example of per sonal restraint I’ve ever seen, one of which I never would have been capable. I thought of that officer a lot over the past week. Thought about the incredible amount of discipline shown by other officers all across the nation as they have been insulted, taunted, ridiculed, and challenged, not by the many thoughtful and very intentionally peaceful protesters, but by n’er-do-wells and miscreants whose only purpose has been to cause trouble. Thought of the fact that while thousands have stoically and professionally done their jobs, hundreds of them defusing potentially explosive situations by refusing to engage in conflict, they all still have been tarnished by the actions of a few. No one condones the actions of the Min neapolis police officer who now stands accused of murder, or his colleagues who allowed it to happen. No one condones the actions of the officers who lost all control in their assault on two college kids in a car in Atlanta, or those who shot and killed an unarmed man in Louisville, or any of the other examples of police violence and brutality. It is a cliche to say that a handful of bad officers can make hundreds of good ones look bad, but it is also true. The men and women we have seen on the streets of cit ies all across the country did not get into police work so that they could quell riots and confront angry crowds of people. They are nervous and scared and apprehensive and worried about their families at home just like anyone would be, though expected to rise above those emotions to be disciplined and professional at all times. And most of them are. It is true that the law enforcement com munity as a whole has been too reluctant in the past to deal with officers who do not need to wear the uniform. If we can hope the most recent protests accomplish anything, maybe it will be to break apart that blue line of loy alty that has too often in the past prevented the good from dealing with the bad within the ranks. Maybe that’s the ultimate promise of officers marching with protestors, of hugs and smiles rather than threats and arrests. We can hope for that outcome. Pray for it. But let us also not forget that for every bad officer, there a hundreds like the trooper on the street in Cumming, listening to a litany of insults, obscenities and accusations, never taking an untoward step toward anyone and just hoping at the end of their shift to go home without anyone getting hurt on either side of the protest line. Norman Baggs is general manager of The Times and has been a journalist in the state for 45 years. NORMAN BAGGS nbaggs@ gainesvilletimes.com DAVID HORSEY I Tribune News Service Elements of the ’60s, but something new Over many years, I’ve wit nessed a good deal of unrest, civil and otherwise. As a teenager, I sat on a car hood and watched the National Guard vehicles roll ing in from Selma, in advance of the thousands marching toward Montgomery. As a college student, I watched a building burn on my campus the night of the Kent State shootings. Lyle Harris and I rode around South Central Los Angeles in the wake of the Rodney King riots. And I’ve seen many, smaller disruptions of civic order. I speak of this by way of saying that any easy comparison between what happened this past weekend and similar unrest in the past is probably wrong. This was not “just like the ’60s,” or anything which has come along since. There are many elements of the past, but this is something new. We don’t really know yet what it is. Chance events have touched off national and international demonstra tions before, but not on the scope of these. There were demonstrations, rioting and looting in cities like Atlanta, which made the national news, but the big news was also in the smaller places — Davenport, Iowa, Greensboro, N.C., Eugene, Ore. — which were going through something they had never experienced, but weren’t big enough or singular enough to garner much notice. Those who took to the streets over the weekend were a remarkable racial mix, both for good and ill. “That’s when the law changes,” activist William Boyd said at a demon stration in Montgomery, Ala., applauding the white protest ers who had turned out. The speed with which Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has embraced hate crimes legislation after the biracial demonstrations in the Amaud Abery case offers evi dence of that. The white women who locked arms in Louisville, Ky., to form a shield between police and protesters were part of that story. So was the white man with the black umbrella caught smashing store windows in Minneapolis, and the white man arrested for setting fire to the Nashville Historic Courthouse. There is lots of footage of black protesters resisting white provocateurs, including UFC light heavyweight champion Jon “Bones” Jones walking the streets of Albuquerque snatch ing spray cans out of the hands of white teenagers. No, this was not just like the ’60s. If one past event seems like a precursor, I’d say it was the rioting in 1992 after four Los Angeles policemen were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. That was the first to be sparked by an amateur video. That precipitating footage ultimately touched off the modern, multi-dimen sional riot. It was really about more than one grievance, and it was also a fly-in riot: a target opportunity, like the furor over the killing of George Floyd, for bad actors from all over to descend upon the city. By and large the troublemakers who arrived in LA back in 1992 were there to loot, at a much more sophisticated level than the smash-and-grabbers. They were criminal but not political. Those who were responsible for much of the damage over this past weekend have had more ideological motives ascribed to them. President Trump has threatened to have the shadowy Antifa declared a terrorist organization, but Antifa is really closer to a social media account than an organization in the old sense. There’s every bit as much reason to suspect Antifa was involved as there is to suspect the involvement of equally shadowy white supremacist groups. And probably some opportunists who are totally off the radar. When things get this bad, everybody shows up. One troubling aspect of what just hap pened was the increasing hostility toward those trying to report on what was happen ing, including the on-air arrest of a CNN reporter and the off-air roughing up of several others, as well as attacks by pro testers on reporters in Birmingham. If this were just like the ’60s, it would be good news for Trump, who could fashion a “law and order” campaign in the style of Richard Nixon in 1968. A backlash to the rioting could hurt Democrats, including those pushing in the Atlanta suburbs for gains in the legislature. But Richard Nixon wasn’t an incumbent, and Trump isn’t Rich ard Nixon. Order, so far, has eluded him. Tom Baxter is a veteran Georgia journalist who writes for The Saporta Report. TOM BAXTER tom@saporta report.com (The (Times Founded Jan. 26,1947 345 Green St., Gainesville, GA 30501 gainesvilletimes.com General Manager Norman Baggs EDITORIAL BOARD Editor in Chief Shannon Casas
