celebration had to be changed<\/a> to include firefighters and other first responders to avoid further protests. \u00a0The church had to assign members to a security detail (my wife was on the foot patrol team with radios to report any sign of trouble), the television news showed up hoping for conflict, the volunteers were so alert for trigger warnings and micro-aggressions they were exhausted from stress. \u00a0That\u2019s one \u201ccommunity celebration\u201d that\u2019ll never happen again.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
You know, if I were a fiendish racist scheming to convince a bunch of polite, moderate Christians that Black people are selfish, hateful and bigoted, I could not possibly have conceived of a better tactic than these \u201cactivists\u201d did all on their own.\u00a0 Way to go, morons; you\u2019ve turned back the racial relations clock a hundred years in that congregation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Y’know, it’s high time someone organized a group. \u00a0Perhaps call it #BlackNeighborhoodsMatter. \u00a0Represent the majority of people in inner city neighborhoods – who don’t condone police bias, but who support a strong aggressive police presence in the neighborhood because it\u00a0helps lower the crime rate\u00a0<\/em>that disproportionally plagues the neighborhoods.<\/p>\nBut of course, the people who’d start such a group are too busy working and raising families, I’m going to guess, to be able to do much organizing, marching and agitation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Some members of Summit Avenue Assembly of God Church wanted to show their appreciation for police.\u00a0 They planned a celebration, lunch, photos of kids with officers, petting zoo, a fun way for members to say \u201cThanks for your service\u201d on a Saturday afternoon.\u00a0 Almost didn\u2019t happen. St. Paul\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[327,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-activism","category-crime-and-punishment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54095"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54099,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54095\/revisions\/54099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}