German Chancellor Merkel exhorts America to seek reconciliation after Murder of Floyd
I had just finished my daily, well almost daily, COVID 19 home work out routine, when I grabbed my phone as I made my way toward the shower. Flipping through the various news stories. I was stopped in my tracks by a News Feed which read, “Angela Merkel calls for reconciliation after the ‘Terrible’ Floyd murder. Wow, I thought as I stepped into the shower. People across the globe are taking our movement seriously, if they are mixing it up in the streets in Germany; over the death of an African American in the United States. I mean, wasn’t Germany supposed to be the birthplace of racial intolerance. I know that there had been international support for the protests happening in the U.S. But things must really be out of control if the chancellor had to make a call for reconciliation among the German people. I couldn’t wait to read the details. How had all this been going on in Germany, and I hadn’t been aware of it.
As I showered, my thoughts veered off to my own recent experience coming across protesters of a different kind. We will call them, Track II protesters. As we will see, some visuals distinguish these types of demonstrations. Out riding my bike, I saw in the distance a rather large group of about one hundred and fifty people walking toward me carrying signs. As I drew closer, I could see the words ‘Black lives matter,’ written. The Marchers were predominately white, with maybe three or four blacks among them.
As I passed, several of them made eye contact with me, they smiled at me as if to say; we are with you. I smiled back, and that was pretty much it. They continued there chants, Black Lives Matter.
For some strange reason, I found it odd, the protesters were all walking on the sidewalks, no motor vehicle traffic was interrupted. The protesters passed a group of about five policemen who were obviously preoccupied with there own conversations.
As the group passed, it hardly got the attention of the police except for one or two brief glances made out of curiosity. When the marchers approached an intersection, they all stopped, and waited until the red light turned green. This, in spite of the fact that no cars were visible, at least as far as I could see. It was as if I had been transported to a protest…
