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“Time Out–Sports”

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So how did you feel on Tuesday afternoon?

Not about the first place Dodgers…the upcoming NFL draft…the Lakers injuries…or the crisis-revolt in soccer in the English Premier League.

No, how did you feel about what happened in Minnesota?

Not to the Twins or Vikings or Timberwolves or Wild.

But what happened in the court-room.

Guilty on all 3-counts against the Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin, found guilty of the murder of George Floyd.

I was apprehensive to the point of feeling sick to my stomach.  At what happened, at what was captured on video, at the riots, at the looting, and the cheering, and what happen next in that courtroom..

It’s 2021 and society may be worse now than it has ever been.

Crushed by this horrible pandemic.
Devastated by deaths everywhere.
Fraught with the disgrace of the last Presidency authored by Trump.
Saddened that all things GOP become partisan votes on anything
Sickened by guns and mental health issues everywhere.
Aching when you think of white supremacists in every corner of US.
Offended that anyone would think 1-6, the Capitol riot was okay.
Disturbed the crisis that is immigration
Melancholy about what Central America and Mexico have become.
Questioning whether we can spend our way back to global respect.
Grieved by the lack of respect for the law, for citizen’s rights and more

The George Floyd case was right before your eyes to see.

Derek Chauvin deserves to go to prison for life.  Of the bigger issue is how we change the policing system in America to protect one and all, the Black man, the Latino, the foreigner and the police.

But also how we change respect for police, so that they are not fearful of their own life everytime there is a call to a house, a traffic stop, or a robbery.

Our society has so many ills….real-imagined….mentally-physically-socially.

So much has been made of the 9:29 video of Floyd’s horrible death.  Maybe the numerals 9:29 are burnt in our memory, much like December 7th…9/11 and other significant dates.

Maybe the conviction of a dirty cop leads to massive police reform-hope it does.  But we still have to solve the guns, drugs, lack of family structure problems, and hatred that seems to be on every street corner, in every dark alley, in every incident out there.

When I saw ‘blue-testify-against blue’…I hoped this was the begging of change from that street corner.
On the other street corner…we need to see a change in the mindset of the everyday citizen-how they act.

A friend in Sarasota couldn’t hold a funeral for his deceased mother.
A friend in Rochester could not give away his daughter in marriage.
A friend downtown lost his restaurant business.

Society has so many ills.  I don’t know how we get our country back to its greatness.

The 9:29 conviction may be a start.  When the decision came down, I flashed back to the 1950s and the Emmett Till killing…and to the 3-Freedom Riders deaths in Mississippi….I hope this was a day of victory…a day of history….and a day of change.

But for this day, I could not concentrate on the NFL draft, who’s hot-who’s not in baseball, the injuries in the NBA, or the horrific business issues in European soccer.

Time out for sports-had to take time to think about our country.

George Floyd’s death should not be in vain.  Going forward 9:29 should help us make changes.

As I turned away from the TV…emotionally moved by what went on in that court.  The picture of the the convicted, being turned around and cuffed  and led away for as much as 40-years in prison.

And as I turned around, I felt like invoking the great hymn from Martin Luther King’s era..’We Shall Overcome’.

I don’t feel good about anything I see right now.  America the beautful?  Doesn’t feel that way right now.

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