Saturday, June 6, 2020 – not your ordinary Saturday

Commentary

On the 76th Anniversary of D-Day, one wonders: Is this what our troops were fighting and sacrificing for?

Today is Saturday, June 6, 2020.

Saturday, the weekend – although I’d suggest for a lot of you out there, during this pandemic, the weekend is no different than the rest of the week.

Saturday, June 6, 2020 is the day we should be commemorating the 76th anniversary of the battle that was the beginning of the end of World War II. It was on June 6, 1944, D-Day, the day that the allies landed on the beaches of Normandy and began the offensive against Nazi armies that ended in Germany’s surrender 10 months later.

It was the day, as I wrote a few days ago, when General Dwight Eisenhower reminded his troops: “The Nazi slogan for destroying us … was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.”’ (https://around-the-block.com/2020/06/04/are-we-at-the-crossroads-between-in-union-there-is-strength-and-divide-and-conquer/)

Saturday, June 6, 2020, is a day that should be like most Saturdays, a day that gives us the time to rest from work, gives us the time to spend enjoying family and friends, gives us the time to do the chores and the fixing that piled up, unfinished, during another hectic week.

But this is no ordinary Saturday, Today is Saturday, June 6, 2020. We’re in the third month of a pandemic. Many of us are not working. Many of us are still in lockdown, either state-mandated or self-imposed for intelligent self-protection against the virus.

When I got up this morning, on this Saturday, June 6, 2020 I was reminded why this is no ordinary Saturday.

After the incident in Buffalo where a 75-year old man was pushed to the ground by police and then left there by the cops, visibly bleeding from the head, the entire Buffalo Police Department Emergency Response Team, that’s 57 officers, resigned from the team in protest of the suspension of the officers who perpetrated the assault. The assault that is on video!

The head of the Minneapolis Police Officer’s Federation, Lt. Bob Kroll, in defending the officers who murdered George Floyd has claimed that activists from the city’s Black Lives Matter movement comprise a “terrorist organization.” Kroll himself has been implicated in a long string of violent abuses, has been allegedly linked to a ‘white power’ biker gang and once wore a “white power” badge on his motorcycle jacket. (Around the Block has not verified these allegations.) Kroll has stated publicly, “Now is not the time rush to judgement and immediately condemn our officers.” The murder of George Floyd that is on video!

In Atlanta, a half-dozen officers have been criminally charged after bystanders tweeted footage of an abrupt attack on two college students sitting in a car during protests. 

In Austin, a 20-year-old protester shot in the head by police officers aiming at someone else with what’s described as nonlethal beanbag ammunition was left with a fractured skull and brain damage. Video shows volunteers being shot, too, as they carry him off.

In California, an officer sitting in a police car in Vallejo shot and killed a 22-year-old man who was on his knees with his hands up. Only later did the police discover that the man, who was suspected of trying to loot a Walgreens, had a hammer in his sweatshirt pocket, not a gun. The family’s lawyer says he has requested the videotape from body cam and store cameras, but police haven’t yet released them.

Cellphone videos show New York City police officers beating unarmed protesters and sideswiping demonstrators with opened squad car doors. Others around the country show the police indiscriminately using pepper spray on protesters or pedestrians. On live television, police officers in Louisville, Ky., fired pepper-spray balls at journalists.

In Fort Lauderdale, Miami Herald reporters filmed officers who were shooting a nonviolent protester in the head with foam rubber bullets, fracturing her eye socket and leaving her screaming and bloody. In Kansas City, Mo., the police walked onto a sidewalk to use pepper spray on protesters yelling at them.

Protesters across the United States, Australia and Europe were staging major demonstrations on Saturday, in the latest sign that anger over police violence.

And finally and astonishingly, the nation’s highest ranking law enforcement official, Attorney General William P. Barr sought to dissociate himself Friday from the police moves on Monday to push back a crowd of largely peaceful demonstrators using horses and gas, so that Trump could have his St. John’s Church visit and Bible stunt – a stunt virtually no GOP senator would criticize. (https://around-the-block.com/category/commentary/)

In this “disassociation,” Barr disputed reports from both the White House press secretary and his own Justice department spokeswoman when he said, “They had the Park Police mounted unit ready, so it was just a matter of execution. So, I didn’t just say to them, ‘Go.’ ” Interesting, remember when Barr, answered a question from Senator Kamala Harris this way, “Yeah, but I’m trying to grapple with the word ‘suggest.'” Ah, the skillfulness of being able to dance on the head of a pin!

Today is Saturday, June 6, 2020. It is not your ordinary Saturday.

Tomorrow is Sunday, June 7, 2020. Will it be your ordinary Sunday?

What do you think?