A. Seek Allies.

Q.  What could the black kids in the streets of Baltimore learn from the recent progress of the gay rights workers -- in the public and private spheres?

I will never forget one of my better law professors explaining to us.  She was prescient, had a big class, and could see some of what was coming, I suspect.

Take This Back Home with You
is what she seemed to say, in so many words.
Even if you don't end up working in the legal firms, or even the legal field, take what I am teaching back to your homes, your neighborhoods and communities, your workplaces, your peoples.  Take this knowledge, take this better understanding of how laws and policies work, and put it to use in your worlds.

She wanted that, you could tell.
Like many law professors, she was Jewish -- many of the women on the law faculty who were not, were once married to the Jews.  You don't have to believe law and order came down from the heavens, necessarily, to understand for good reason, that particular ethnicity has been involved in the legal system in good numbers from the beginning...

I went home this past weekend -- to the home in Thornton where I was raised, where we moved in 1972, days before I turned 4...  Chicago was changing then, rapidly. As was the country...

Fires are burning in the streets again now, in baltimore.
Police officers are being attacked for who they are, not what they've done. We're "tribing up", not thinking of each other as individuals using reason rather than violence.

Today -- win or lose -- gay people across the country will have representatives arguing that they should all be able to get in the game, no more sitting the bench thinking there's no place on the team.  No more moving across the country in search of open playing fields. 

No more getting judged by how the group acts, even if there's no way you'd be in the mix doing that...

Baltimore burns, in places
and sadly, the cause once again seemingly is for Blacks Only.

It's not about Police Brutality,
it's about Black Men.
After the videotape of the man being shot multiple times in the back was released, I was hopeful.  Everybody was on board.  But then, the black pundits and columnists reminded us this was their turf, and it got spun again into a racial issue.  (I even heard more than one person sound like the answer is that more white men should be shot dead by police when acting violently, as if that would even things out.)

The gay rights movement will win today, even the Court rules against them, because they are there, where change happens.

The poor blacks, burning off anger in the streets, will hoist a reparations-seeking spokesman or two, who will be handsomely rewarded himself, and might even create ripples of change, advantaging others.  Say what you will, but the Jesse Jacksons, say, do acquire granted concessions, except in the long run, without the systematic changes, such indulgences don't go very far.

Seek Allies.
Define your Cause.
Read, Read, Read, Read.
Know Your Histories, yours and mine.

Get it through the courthouse doors.  You can get attention throwing your heels, fighting back, burning tires, tipping cars.  But eventually, you need to turn to the scholars, the level-headed reasoners, to bring it home.