Karen Keys-Gamarra has taught her sons well. One night driving home from work one of her sons, a West Pointer, passed a domestic abuse incident happening right on the side of the road. It was bad he said. Some guy was wailing on a woman. He thought of jumping in, but what if the guy had a gun?
Instead, he stopped his truck and called the police and described what he was seeing. He was asked if he could stay on the phone and at the scene until the police arrived. He said yes, but added:
"I'm in a red pick-up, wearing a green shirt, baseball cap, and I’m a black man, please don’t shoot me."
A police officer fires stun gun at compliant Black man
Wtf?!? In what world do you have to say that to protect yourself? Karen knows what kind of world, and while raising her kids she prepared them to stay alive in it. As an old white woman, I have no experience with anything like this. While I may be able to put myself in that spot for a few minutes and feel like I’m empathizing, there is no way I do that every day, all day, the way I would if I were Black. Especially if I were a Black man.
A major issue that Karen wants to address as a delegate is criminal justice reform. Now, I’ve read much of what she’s written on the subject, I’ve listened to speeches she’s given, and I’ve talked to her. I have found her somewhat difficult to understand.
I have heard it said that her seeming self-confidence and ease of communication can be seen as characteristic of what some folk might call “an uppity negro.” I would laugh at that if it weren’t so sad and scary. I find her difficult to understand because she is much better educated on many subjects than I and knows the ins and out of the language.
I need a dumbed down version because phrases like “criminal justice reform” just swoosh past my ears. My take on what she means is that:
~ sentencing laws are insane, mandatory minimums are whacked and need to be repealed.
~studies show that POC get harsher sentences than whites for the same crime. (and don’t even get
me started on how US sentences are twice as long as Australian sentences and come on, Australia
started as a penal colony.) We need to fix that.
~the War on Drugs is a failure that costs 50 million a year. It’s a system of oppression much the
same as Jim Crow laws. We need to follow Portugals lead and treat drugs as a health issue.
~police brutality, well I don’t need to spell that out, do I? Police need to learn 21st century
techniques for peacekeeping and they need to be held accountable when they deviate. They
need to do their jobs, do them well, or lose their jobs.
Arrested for “Walking while Black” in Beverly Hills
Karen’s son’s most recent encounter with the police was when, after dinner with friends he was waiting outside for an Uber. Next to him a police officer was harassing a man who was maybe foreign, or English was his second language. He wasn’t understanding the police’s harsh insistence that the man had to take a breathalyzer. This was a guy standing, not driving and the policeman was a beat cop.
Karen’s son walked over to the man to let him know his rights and that he did not have to take a breathalyzer. (Because that’s what Army guys do — help out.) The police officer then turned his attention to him and followed him to where he was waiting for his Uber, yelling at him and pointing his finger at him and escalating to jabbing his finger into his chest.
From an early age, Karen taught her sons that their #1 job was to come home alive. So, her son stood and took the police officer's abuse. I picture him chanting in his head a mantra of “stay alive, stay alive”. He stood stiff and took it until his Uber arrived and then he hopped in. The police officer chased the car. Chased the car! On foot!
Yeah, our criminal justice system needs to be reformed and Karen Keys-Gamarra has some good ideas about how to go about it.
One of the candidates in this race for district 7 just withdrew from the race and endorsed Karen! patch.com/...
