[WAITE HOYT 2]

If anyone is interested I have no issue with his actions. I don't find it disrespectful and applaud his stance. There is still many injustices that are happening everyday in this country. As a 20 year veteran who stood a post with many people of different races I know and have seen to many instances to think it isn't still very much happening in today's America. I have personally seen and been a part of a few such events. I was visiting a bar in Melbourne Fla with a subordinate of mine who was a black man when we decided to stop for a beer before heading home. We ordered a drink and thought we would play a game of pool. Before we could break, a man walked to the table and picked up the cue ball and informed us the Klan was alive and well in west Melbourne. In my younger days I played inter service league basketball and just like today I was a minority on the team as a white man. We would travel to near by bases for games and of course we would go out at night. While standing in line to get in I paid my cover and walked in while my black military brothers were asked for 2 picture ID's. On another ocassion I was riding to a wedding for one of by combat crew members who was a black man. I was asleep and we were pulled over for a tail light. I woke up to the shouting of a police officer pointing a loaded gun at us. All for a taillight. While discrimination is not as open as it was years back it is still very much in existence. As assimilated as I have tried to become after a upbringing in Norwood it still requires that I slow down and try to understand all sides of a issue before passing judgement. I constantly have to reconfigure my inherited prejudices by challenging myself to look at another side of a issue.

People are saying he could have found another way to make his point but why should he have to make this point to begin with. We continually miss the easy things in this country. Where is the outrage for the 22 military vets a day who take their own lives. We are incarcerating children to fill beds in the juvenile system in this country for prison for profit corporations. A judge just received 28 years in jail for this crime in PA. I'm for anyone who wants to right wrongs and darn anyone who's only rebuttal is he should have found another way to make his voice heard. Sorry for the rant but I have grandkids I will be leaving behind someday and this shit needs to end. Acting like it doesn't exist will not get the job done.