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Helping the Protests

2020-06-06 15:15:00.821307+00 by Dan Lyke 0 comments

My Dad served in US Army Military Intelligence for 6 years. ROTC helped pay for his college, and when his 4 years were over he upped for another 2, and likely would have re-upped again, except that a stint in Vietnam was a surety at that point. Monitoring the Soviets was a cause he could believe in. But he also worked in military/defense adjacent stuff for another couple of years.

Two decades or so later, around 1990, '91, when George Bush was making up reasons to invade Iraq (the first time), he expressed regret, not so much at his military service, but because he did so at a time when the country was exploding in protest, and he'd been solidly inside the establishment, rather than on the streets working to overthrow the horrors and injustices of America of the 1960s.

The other day, someone on Twitter tagged me in a search for mentors of people of color in the software business. And I was like "yeah, I'm happy to help, but I've worked with basically the same small group of people or their friends since coming to California", and then I realized "oh, that's exclusionary as hell and part of the problem, isn't it?"

So as I see the world around me explode (and I've been aware of some of the injustices since my long-haired hippy days), I'm wondering how I can best effect change. Marching in a protest in my town seems twee, a bunch of white people on wide sidewalks in a very white town where the police may be casually racist (I've heard some reports) but know who pays their bills doesn't feel super effective.

Charlene and I watched Selma last night, and talked a little bit about what we might to do help.

I could Sharpie a lawyer's phone number on my wrist and bus down to Oakland or SF, and I'm trying to figure out how I feel about that.

Anyway, we've upped our donations to various organizations that work on these sorts of issues, and bought (take-out) dinner last night from a restaurant that announced that as the mid-way between the park where the Petaluma protests start and the police station, they were happy to provide water and snacks.

[ related topics: Politics Movies Food Bay Area Software Engineering Law Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement Civil Liberties California Culture Education Race Public Transportation ]

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