Category Archives: 1 Senior Current Issues

• Go to NPR link for podcast on President Obama’s meeting with Law Enforcement officials and Civil Rights leaders.
• Benjamin Watson New Orleans Saints – on Facebook.

The events of Ferguson highlight a serious problem in the United States.  For whatever reason (and the issues are wide and deep and grey)  too many cops are killing too many American citizens.  Many of these deaths are unnecessary.  And consistently the victims are black and poor and often homeless or mentally ill.  I’m not saying that I know what happened specifically with Michael Brown and officer Darrin Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri; I don’t.  Maybe that is why I don’t have a passionate position on this incident.  I do know that had there been organized response to the shooting death of Kajamie Powell, a few miles from the site of the Brown shooting, I would have found my way to Missouri.  Maybe I should have just gone and initiated it; that was an absolute abuse of power.   The response, which was non-existent should have been loud and long and hard.

While trying not to throw a blanket of blame on all of law enforcement (a large majority of police officers in this country do their job well), and not absolving the criminal element on our streets, nor dismissing the massive number of weapons available to it, nor the myriad of problems in many of our inner cities, some by choice and others by circumstance, something is structurally and morally wrong in our country.

Just like the criminal defense lawyers serving in Colorado Springs, the law enforcement officers are public servants – the police department fulfills the general welfare promise of the Constitution of the United States.  Cops are supposed to instill a sense of calm and confidence and support among the citizenry.  They don’t instill that feeling for many Americans, particularly in  urban minority communities.  Too much abuse; too much unchecked power.  Too many shootings. I know that when the police show up in third world countries they seldom instill a sense of confidence.  Third world police are about corruption and unchecked brutality.  Similar images of American policemen (accurate or not) are currently appearing on television screens and smart phones all over the United States.  The last time that this country saw such a consistent abuse of power was in the 1960’s when white Southern police response to a nonviolent Civil Rights movement was brutal and out of proportion to community action.

Nothing so serious is ever so simple.  So let us tread lightly…but let us tread. Continue reading →

Kelly Locke an ex-student sent me Teddy Bear’s Porcupine Halloween Feast this weekend.  I watched it and I thought of our first hour Senior Current Issues class.  I’ve been reading your Mindfulness experiments all day long…what a joy to read them.  Your weekends sound mindful.  To take a cup of tea from the bubbles off the pot all the way through to the scent of the berries, and feel of the steam of the cup, to find your family in an orange or a big ole strapping Oak Tree – and to hug it for twenty minutes. Nature called out to many of you in such a mindful manner and on such beautiful weekend.  And the Friday night lights of an Oakridge football game – the marching band and pre game rituals.  Guys, thank you for sharing your experiences with me.  All of them and I’m only half way through them.

I’ve never had Senior Current Issues class so in tuned to daily meditation and the light of a candle.  I think we will start many days this school year with calm mindful meditation.

And I am sure that you all will appreciate the mindfulness in which Teddy Bear enjoys his pumpkin feast.

Nameste.