FERGUSON: DO WE "GET IT" ?

Less than a month since the protests began in Ferguson, there is some good news.  People of different faiths, colors and economies are extending their interest and assistance in building bridges between them and people in the Ferguson Community.


Yet, there are many of us who still don't get it! We are still reluctant to understand what really happened in Ferguson, Missouri and other cities across the country.


We still talk past each other instead of listening to each other.  We want quick answers! We are not ready to pickup our responsibility as voters to do the work of maintaining and furthering government that reflects and respects all people.


We are still ready to accept and elect, or worse yet not vote at all, officials who refer to us as great blubs like "the poor," or "the unemployed," or the "disabled or the elderly," while short changing many of us on opportunities for education, health services, or to earn fair wages.


We are still listening to and supporting local and national figures who attribute real, everyday problems to "political correctness," or some other scary" ism.  We still believe that what happens   "elsewhere" cannot happen in the suburb or city or region or place where we live.


We are still fearful of looking each other in the eye, much less of greeting strangers. We are still knit-picking at accounts of where and how Ferguson took place. Was it on a street or a highway?  Should the National Guard have been sent for instead of according the state trooper credit for bringing order to an unimaginable civil uprising.


Yes, Ferguson is beginning to show that many of us do "get it," but until we begin to exert our power in conversations with each other, or take the time to write to our newspapers or to tweet or  to vote at the ballot box, we will have "lost" it.