President Barack Obama on Tuesday praised Dallas police officers including the five slain at a protest against police violence last week for saving lives during the deadliest day for US law enforcement in nearly 15 years. “The deepest fault lines of our democracy have been exposed and even widened”.
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Tom Pennington/Getty Images News/Getty ImagesDALLAS, TX – JULY 12: U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks during an interfaith memorial service, honoring five slain police officers, at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center on July 12, 2016 in Dallas, Texas. But as those in Orlando and Dallas illustrate, Cohen said, the threat may not “neatly fit legal definitions”.
I’m just going to say it: You can think whatever you want to want to about our president, but Obama’s Dallas memorial address was spot on and important in so many ways.
The visit to Dallas required a rhetorical balancing act from the nation’s first African-American president.
President Obama first made the claim during a January town hall on CNN while discussing his executive action on guns. But he has also been accused by political opponents of showing insufficient support for police officers who operate in often perilous conditions. “You know how unsafe some of these communities these police serve are. They are deserving of our respect and not our scorn”. Americans should think long and hard about they want.
“When African-Americans from all walks of life, from different communities across the country voice a growing despair at what they perceive to be unequal treatment … we can not simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as trouble makers or paranoid”, he said. “To have your experience denied like that, dismissed by those in authority, … it hurts”. Race relations have improved dramatically in my lifetime. After the deaths of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota at the hands of police last week, Obama said a significant number of Americans believe they are treated differently because of the color of their skin. We must hear them even as we honor our police.
He added: “None of us are entirely innocent”.
The Gates incident also irritated Travis Yates, a major with the Tulsa, Oklahoma, police department and editor of lawofficer.com.
The mayor called for the city to come together as it grieves. At times on Tuesday, he seemed to be fighting against his own sense of impotence and disappointment that his rhetoric had not forged more progress. “I’ve seen how inadequate words can be in bringing about lasting change”.
Reaching for understanding, the President said, “When mothers and fathers raised their kids right, and have the talk about how to respond if stopped by a police officer – yes, sir; no, sir – but still fear that something awful may happen when their child walks out the door; still fear that kids being stupid and not quite doing things right might end in tragedy”.
In paying tribute to the police, Obama said that officers in Dallas and around the country had embraced a profession that came with risks like no other. “The moment you put on that uniform, you answer a call that in any moment can put your life in harm’s way”. The building itself, one of Dallas’ finest, was transcendent.
As a society, we choose to under-invest in decent schools. “We allow poverty to fester so that entire neighborhoods offer no prospect for gainful employment”. Following Dallas police chief David Brown’s address, which ended with a lovely recitation of Stevie Wonder’s “As,” Obama got right to the heart of the issues that have taken so many lives, whether they are black, white, or police in “blue”.
He once told me that if politics didn’t work out he’d be happy to sit in a fishing boat out on a Texas lake. You are a drug counselor.
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We weren’t waiting for the President to tell us we’ve done what is right. Bush also sought to strike a note of unity. “I didn’t want something to go wrong with the president coming here, because we are exhausted”. “We do not want the unity of grief nor do we want the unity of fear”.
