I frequently laugh out loud at some of the letters to the editor at the S.F. Chronicle. People never fail to amuse me with their dumb ideas. But yesterday, there was a letter so ridiculous, I practically did a spit-take.
It was about People’s Park, which as we all know has been in the news lately. The letter writer, a guy from Larkspur (not even in the East Bay) insisted we have to preserve People’s Park as “hallowed ground” because—wait for it—it’s as much a part of “our collective history” as “Gettysburg or Bunker Hill.”
Everybody’s entitled to his own opinion, I guess, but “People’s Park” in the same league as Gettysburg or Bunker Hill? Well, I don’t intend to opine on People’s Park and step into that steaming mess of controversy, but I do want to suggest that the Larkspur writer shares much in common with the wokeness that we’re trying to get rid of here in Oakland.
First, there’s the addiction to hyperbole and exaggeration. Let’s get one thing straight: People’s Park is not the same thing as the bloodiest battle of the U.S. Civil War (Gettyburg) or Bunker Hill, a formative event in the American Revolution. It’s rather insulting to put what is, after all, a minor local brouhaha that not many people care about in the same category as these foundational events in our nation’s history.
The letter writer also claimed that “demonstrators attempting to save the park in 1969 were murdered there by police…”. This, too, isn’t true. History tells us that in 1969, when the Park had been taken over by protestors, “Law enforcement killed one man and injured dozens of protesters…”. It was tragic that “one man” was killed, but the protest was an exceedingly violent one. The outnumbered police fought back against repeated mob attacks, and “one man,” singular, doesn’t equal “demonstrators,” plural, as the letter writer asserts. Nor can it be asserted that the single victim was “murdered.” According to Wikipedia, six thousand violent protestors squared off against the police; the rioters threw “rocks and bricks” at the cops, set at least one patrol car on fire, and then “chased” an overwhelmed group of sheriff’s deputies, who had to take cover in a nearby building. The victim was not “murdered” by cops; he was accidentally shot.
We hear this allegation of “murder” every time a criminal is killed by police. While it’s true that the 1969 victim apparently was simply an observer, not a participant in the melee, that doesn’t change the fact that there was no intent on the part of the police to kill him. Thus, it wasn’t murder, the way gangbangers routinely murder each other with not a peep of criticism from “progressives.” But the wokes never have a problem with throwing around fake charges in order to smear the reputation of law enforcement. Every time a thug is shot and killed by cops, usually when he’s fighting them or attempting to escape, we see a weeping mama on the nightly news wailing that her baby was “murdered.” I object to that kind of hype, which is designed to stir up people’s emotions. The police do not go out and “murder” innocent civilians. When people are shot by cops, there’s almost always a damned good reason for it, or it’s an accident. Either way, it’s not murder.
So let the People’s Park thing resolve itself however it will. It’s not my fight. But I do object to newspapers printing false statements, which the Chronicle has a nasty habit of doing, and I object to wokes falsifying history for their own purposes.
Steve Heimoff