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The “civil unrest” that Mr. Blackstone refers to DID NOT all start with the “defund the police” mantra. It started with the killing of George Floyd by the police. The entire country watched videos time and again of the horrific death. This after multiple videos of other inexplicable killings of unarmed Black citizens by police. And for the first time in my life we saw at least 80% of our citizens acknowledge (often for the first time) the systemic racism that is built into American policies from education, to housing, healthcare, banking, and underemployment of African Americans.

I do not like the phrase “defund the police.” It has been around since the 1970’s and is a terribly inaccurate choice of words for what the majority of protestors are asking for. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden does not believe in “defunding the police forces.” Nor does Bernie Sanders or the ever demonized Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer. If a person were to listen to PBS news hour or even ABC, CBS and NBC instead of Trump’s Twitter feed or his spokespersons on Fox News they would hear the truth. The majority of the country is asking for substantial reform in policing. We are asking for more education and job training for police. We are wanting an “unbundling” of police services that relieves the police of the burden of being first responders to all situations. We are asking for more specialized response teams like ER medical teams for substance abuse issues, conflict resolution teams for domestic violence situations, social workers for homeless, medically trained personnel for mental health cases, and the list goes on.

Our president has NOT responded to the protests with any thoughtful, progressive, educated, non-judgmental, listening approach Ever. There are conversations that need to be had. There is bi-partisan agreement wanting to address long overdue issues to either reallocate funding or additional funding for more specialized services for our worsening social problems. The absolute last response the country needed was for the President to create and deploy his own military agents to willfully and physically suppress American’s constitutional right to peacefully protest until their voices are heard.

Please don’t start spewing about the violence from the far left anarchists! There is far more evidence and proof that much of the violence has been instigated by far right nationalist and white supremacist groups. It is a fact that the Right is actually organized on-line and responds with militia groups to the unorganized leftist peaceful protestors.

Until we have a leader that listens to the people, none of this will stop. Until the partisanship gripping our nation relaxes, none of this will stop. Until we can re-introduce civil conversation, none of this will stop. And most importantly until we ALL demand the truth from our leaders, none of this will stop.

Kris Anderson,

Thompson Falls