A Frightening Time And Some Advice For Children
This day, in 1989, I thought I was going to die. I thought counter-demonstrators were going to rush the crowd, overwhelm the police guard, and tear into the group of reporters and eight racists marching through downtown Atlanta. The demonstration was planned by Richard Barrett, who claimed he would draw a thousand people to march with him to protest the Martin Luther King Junior holiday. He got seven others to go with him - and a small army of police, guard members, and law officers from all over the state to escort him.
The march would start and end at the Georgia State Capital Building. The route would take Barrett right through downtown and the five points area. Nobody knew exactly what would happen, but Doug Rink and I were assigned to cover it with live updates and interviews for WSB Radio.
Before the protest march started, Doug and I decided to split our efforts. One of us would stay inside the police cadre, and the other would stay outside their perimiter, free to roam and cover reaction and anything else that might happen outside the march itself. We each carried tape recorders and walkie-talkies and cell telephones to use in filing the reports. I also took a small police scanner and an earpiece to try to monitor what officers were seeing along the way.
Barrett is a Vietnam veteran, born in New York, lives in the deep south. He got a degree from Rutgers and Memphis State, and is a lawyer. If you want to know more about Barrett, I would suggest Google. There’ plenty to find on the internet, both supporting and deriding him.
Long before the scheduled time of the march, anti-demonstrators had showed up to chant and taunt the few who had showed up to march in favor of white supremacy. When the march started, the counter-demonstrators seemed to gain new energy and volume. They were shadowing Barrett and his escort.
The march went past the construction site for the World Of Coca Cola, and some other improvements near Underground Atlanta. That’s where the anti-demonstrators loaded up on ammo. There were plenty of rocks at the construction site…some a little bit bigger than eggs, and some about the size of softballs–about as big as a normal person could heave. And they did.
Suddenly, a law officer yelled “Inoming!” I was carrying a shotgun microphone trying to get some natural sound, so I looked over my shoulder and up to the sky..to see dozens of rocks raining down. The march kept going. Counter-demonstrators kept shadowing the march…rocks falling all around. Police formed a tighter escort around Barrett and picked up the pace a bit. As we neared downtown..crowds ran into a multi-story parking garage and used the altitude advantage to drop more rocks, bottles, and anything else they could pry loose.
The law officers had trained for this kind of stuff. had it not been for that training, the entire group of marchers would have been overwhelmed and in a big fight. As it turned out, several rocks came scarily close to bonking me on the head. Others bounced off the pavement and hit my legs and feet. I saw fear in the faces on some of the law officers, but they never flinched in their duty. And any reporter inside that police cordon who was not scared spitless - at least for a little while- was a poor judgement of what they call situational awareness.
It was not my first time to see race-hate. I had covered other confrontations, and even federal trials of members of the Klan who allegedly attacked a man and a woman. But that was the first time I had -ever- been in peril simply because of an argument over skin color. Amazing.
Thousands and thousands of dollars spent to protect a man who showed hate for people who weren’t the same color as him. Law officers formed a human shield to make sure he could exercise his right to free speech, no matter how hateful or hurtful that speech could be.
And on the other side, I saw the visceral reaction to that marching man. With each rock- a bit of hate and despite for what he stood for. And the law of civility and the law of man was no match for that deep reaction to the march, and the affront to people of color by the eight marchers.
It was no field day for Doug Rink, either. He was whacked by a flying bottle. And at a later rally, I was chased and cornered by some racists, apparently Klan members. Were it not for another man who stepped up to show I was not along, I might have been pounded to apple butter.
Hate is a powerful thing. Very powerful. Fortunately, we are for the most part a civil society that does not live by the rule of the flying rock, or the sniper hiding, waiting to take a life. The United States is better than that.
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Now, as per my friend, Hallerin Hilton Hill- here are the ten things kids won’t learn in school:
. You got it from your parents, who said it so often you decided they must be the most idealistic generation ever. When they started hearing it from their own kids, they realized Rule #1.
Rule #2. The real world won’t care as much about your self-esteem as your school does. It’ll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself. This may come as a shock. Usually, when inflated self-esteem meets reality, kids complain that it’s not fair. (See Rule No. 1)
Rule #3. Sorry, you won’t make $50,000 a year right out of high school. And you won’t be a vice president or have a car phone either. You may even have to wear a uniform that doesn’t have a Gap label.
Rule #4. If you think your teacher is tough, wait ’til you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he is not going ask you how feel about it.
Rule #5. Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity. They weren’t embarrassed making minimum wage either. They would have been embarrassed to sit around talking about Kurt Cobain all weekend.
Rule #6. It’s not your parents’ fault. If you screw up, you are responsible. This is the flip side of “It’s my life,” and “You’re not the boss of me,” and other eloquent proclamations of your generation. When you turn 18, it’s on your dime. Don’t whine about it or you’ll sound like a baby boomer.
Rule #7. Before you were born your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way paying your bills, cleaning up your room and listening to you tell them how idealistic you are. And by the way, before you save the rain forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents’ generation try delousing the closet in your bedroom.
Rule #8. Life is not divided into semesters, and you don’t get summers off. Nor even Easter break. They expect you to show up every day. For eight hours. And you don’t get a new life every 10 weeks. It just goes on and on.
Rule #9. Television is not real life. Your life is not a sitcom. Your problems will not all be solved in 30 minutes, minus time for commercials. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to jobs. Your friends will not be perky or as polite as Jennifer Aniston.
Rule #10. Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.
Rule #11. Enjoy this while you can. Sure, parents are a pain, school’s a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you’ll realize how wonderful it was to be kid. Maybe you should start now.
A very good blog, I will often come to see.