Peaceful demonstration coverage

Thank you, Julie Reeder, and those in the Village News who covered the peaceful demonstrations in Fallbrook and Temecula.

Your coverage and the words of those participants who were interviewed showed compassion for George Floyd, a fellow human being, who suffered terrible injustice at the hands of another human being and solidarity with black Americans.

One of the protester’s signs read, “Racism isn’t greater, it’s filmed.”

This thought brought me back to my youth when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a large group of black Americans down a street in Chicago during a time in the early 1950s when a political convention was taking place in that city. That demonstration was filmed by the TV cameras there to cover the convention.

The images that were displayed on our black and white TVs showed people spitting on and throwing things at the law-abiding marchers in the parade of our fellow Americans who were brave enough to take the anger and hatred being flung at them.

Racism and racial hatred were on display for all in our watching nation, and world, to see as was the courage and nonviolence of black Americans marching in that parade.

This incident and other similar revelations led our Supreme Court to declare racial discrimination unconstitutional.

I graduated in 1956 from the first desegregated high school class of our small town in Oklahoma; a state that honored the Supreme Court decision because it was the right thing to do.

This nation’s Declaration of Independence from English rule declares that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The Bible declares that we humans are made in the image of our creator.

The constitution of this nation guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of peaceful assembly in its First Amendment.

We humans are a diverse body of people with many skin colors.

May this outpouring of compassion for George Floyd lead those in police departments across this land to take inventory and our high calling of respect for one another and make changes as needed.

No one should appoint themselves as judge and jury condemning another fellow human being.

May we also search our own hearts and see if there is any prejudice or wickedness that needs to be uprooted and cast out.

What a different picture your coverage paints in contrast to the riots happening in other cities across our nation.

Jim Bowles