{"id":41,"date":"2020-06-01T23:18:48","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T23:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/2020\/06\/01\/i-gotta-believe-in-hope-black-leaders-say-change-can-come-without-violence"},"modified":"2020-06-02T14:16:03","modified_gmt":"2020-06-02T14:16:03","slug":"i-gotta-believe-in-hope-black-leaders-say-change-can-come-without-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/news\/commentary\/i-gotta-believe-in-hope-black-leaders-say-change-can-come-without-violence","title":{"rendered":"‘I gotta believe in hope’: Black leaders say change can come without violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor’s note: In the column, the president of the NAACP describes some of the history of racism in graphic language, including the use of a racial slur. We’ve chosen to include the quote unedited.<\/em><\/p>\n

Is this it? Is the peaceful protest-turned-ugly Sunday in Long Beach the beginning of a new era in which racial discrimination is finally throttled to death?<\/p>\n

There is hope among some in the black community, however slight, that the protests, largely peaceful but accompanied by fire, violence and looting<\/a> all across the country in the days since the killing of George Floyd, are going to be the catalyst for changing the way police deal with young black men in this country.<\/p>\n

There is hope, again a tenuous one, that the events will spark, finally, a positive move toward true equity and equality and an abandonment of hatred. The question is, does the healing start right now, or are we going to have to wait, yet again, for the fire next time?<\/p>\n

Many African American city and community leaders have seen this before over the past 55 years, and yet they have hope that something good will come of the protests this time. And, for the most part, they disregard the looters and arsonists who have been systematically destroying inner-city communities and businesses as mercenary outliers and opportunists.<\/p>\n

\u201cI gotta believe in hope,\u201d said 6th District Councilman Dee Andrews, who saw firsthand the damage that had been done to the neighborhoods in his district Sunday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been through all 3 riots\u2014Watts, Rodney King and all down the line,\u201d said Andrews, 75. \u201cI know that this violence and looting isn\u2019t going to benefit anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrews got up at dawn Monday to help sweep up broken glass and otherwise assist in the rebuilding of the neighborhoods in his district.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate to see things being torn down,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have small businesses here and we can\u2019t be burning them down or tearing them up. People have just started getting back on their feet again from COVID, and now people are tearing things down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrews said he has faith in reform and that people need to become angry enough to know that the system has to be changed, though, he said, \u201cI do believe in our system, and I think and hope change can come without violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

NAACP Long Beach Branch President Naomi Rainey-Pierson is closing in on 70 and has seen the worst of racism since she was a little girl in a segregated neighborhood in Mississippi.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere I was, a little 10-year-old person walking in the woods picking berries, flowers and herbs, and I\u2019ve seen black men hung, with their genitals cut out and tongues cut out. My church was burned down. I had an elementary-school classmate who was chopped up and they used his blood to write on a school wall. \u2018This is what we do to niggers when they don\u2019t know their place.\u2019 This has been going on since slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those are particularly harsh examples of racism in America, yet, while horrifying, aren’t just remnants of the past. Sadly, the U.S. is a country today that isn\u2019t listening to its better angels.<\/p>\n

The protesters on Sunday, Rainey-Pierson said, were mostly peaceful, and blamed organized outsiders for the violent aspects of the day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe in nonviolence,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I believe that if you believe in something, you don\u2019t loot. You protest, but you don\u2019t destroy property. You don\u2019t all fight over everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rainey-Pierson said that the protests aren\u2019t just about George Floyd. Echoing the philosophy and words of Martin Luther King Jr., she said, \u201cIf people think that, they\u2019re failing to hear about those who live in \u2018the other America.\u2019 In other America, men walk the streets in search of jobs that don\u2019t exist. In the other America, millions are forced to live in distressed housing. Their incomes are far too low, thousands of kids are graduating high school at 7th and 8th grade reading levels. Elementary school students get iPads or Google Books but they don\u2019t have internet access, and their parents can\u2019t help, so they\u2019re getting farther and farther behind. It\u2019s symptomatic of dreams deferred. Will we be, in another 50 years, still quoting Dr. King?\u201d<\/p>\n

The cyclical, deja-vu aspects of the Sunday disturbance are not lost on anyone who lived through the trio of racial violence episodes in California and beyond. And still the conversation hasn\u2019t progressed, anymore than gun violence hasn\u2019t been dealt with in any meaningful way.<\/p>\n

Sharon McLucas, a longtime activist in the African American community, said she\u2019s lived in Long Beach through the Watts riots in 1965, the King riots in 1992, and now this, and the repeating pattern breaks her heart.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unfortunate that we have agitators tearing things up,\u201d she said. \u201cThere needs to be a change. There just needs to be a change. I cried when I heard George Floyd calling for his mama. I wish you could talk to my daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was an easy wish to grant, because McLucas\u2019 daughter, educator Sheba Gillis, was right next to her.<\/p>\n

Gillis, 41, was a freshman in high school during the Rodney King riots. \u201cI was living in Wrigley at the time and I saw all the destruction. I saw the DMV burn down.\u201d She said it\u2019s discouraging to see violence happening again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been in a few protests,\u201d she said, \u201cand for the most part, the vibe was amazing on Sunday.\u201d But, later, the violence came and the needle moved back in the wrong direction again.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were just starting to bring new merchants to the area, then this,\u201d she said sadly. \u201cI won\u2019t be surprised if they don\u2019t come back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I believe that if you believe in something, you don\u2019t loot,” said Naomi Rainey-Pierson. “You protest, but you don\u2019t destroy property. You don\u2019t all fight over everything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":208,"featured_media":1062,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[20],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[22],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","tag-tim-grobaty","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/208"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}