BLACK AND WHITE COOL NEEDED

as long as we have words

     As we struggle with race in America here's an interesting  perspective. Picture last week's victims of police violence and the murdered police officers in Dallas as children. Picture the executioners as children as well. Reflect on that for a moment-once they all were kids, playful, innocent and not yet ensnared in the virus of racism.

     I heard author Kwame Alexander pose that idea and it cuts to the heart of the matter.  

     I've posted previously about KLAN the documentary I wrote, produced and directed that examined how racism is passed through generations. There are moments when children are free from the poison of hatred. Those are moments of hope and possibility. We become discouraged we cannot evolve or eradicate the psychology and seeds of prejudice. But it does happen. In my study of the klan we heard a young daughter of a klan leader say "...they should shoot all the niggers or put them back in the slave houses."  10 years later in a re-visit of the documentary that girl, now a young woman, apologized explaining how wrong she had been. But it came with a price. She was rejected by her father and thrown out of their home. 

a hot summer in the city

      It was during an earlier season of racial tension when cities were erupting. Dick Lugar was still a relatively new mayor and Indianapolis was in a metamorphosis from an aging rust belt old industrial city to the dynamic place it has become. This was in the early gearing up of the change and there were urban illnesses. His young team of visionaries were treating those malady's bit by bit while constructing a larger dream. It did not help that Cincinnati, Chicago, Gary, St Louis, Columbus, Dayton and other neighboring cities were in varying degrees of trouble and disintegration. It was a time of powder kegs.

      Indianapolis threatened to explode because of sparks coming from an area known as Highland Tech, an old neighborhood that had changed. It was near the Women's Prison, Arsenal Tech, the state's largest high school and bordered by business and industry that had eaten away at a once staid area. Now working class and those barely escaping poverty, black and white mixed and there had been shootings and violence in the streets and alleys. Race violence was suspected. The Black Panther party was thought to be responsible, or so the rumor and "consensus" had it. That was not the case.

       I spent two weeks walking house to house in the troubled area, morning, afternoon and evenings. I talked to everyone who opened the door, some would not, out of fear. I stopped people who were walking, talked with gaggles of people in alleyways, garages, on porches and street corners. One on one and with groups, black, white, those who were new to the neighborhood and long time residents. I spent time talking with Panther leaders. I learned the truth and it was something different than most people thought.

     The Panthers were not involved. In fact the shootings and and violence were the result of a couple of gangs, one a notorious white motorcycle outfit. They were warring over turf and a drug trade. I reported that. It was news to the police department and to activist groups that had been ratcheting up on a false premise. I was thanked by the Mayors office that began to work with neighbors and a neighborhood association, armed with the knowledge of the reality on the street. One racial tinderbox defused, by facts and rationality. 

     Presumptions are akin to prejudice. Both are dangerous.

America needs cool heads, honest talk, frank conversation and a government that is willing to work.

cooling walk

     As swelter and bake describe conditions where some of you reside LightBreezes provides cooling scenes.

   Though blue sky and bright sun adorned our ridge a stroll along a Pacific bluff trail in northern San Luis Obispo County presented a cooling marine fog and brisk breeze. 

    A wetland, fed by a spring creates a vibrant verdancy.

    See you down the trail.

ACKNOWLEDGED GRATITUDE

THANKFUL

    It's a great idea isn't it? A day devoted to gratitude. Among the blessings I count this year is investigative reporting. Yea, a little out of the mainstream, but still appreciative enough to share a post.

     It started when a legendary radio newsman Fred Heckman hired me from a little station in Muncie Indiana to join his 50 thousand watt "Voice of News" market leader in Indianapolis.

     As a young reporter I "went back to high school," undercover, to document drug and gang problems. Later, the Black Panthers, New Mobilization Committee to End the War, Beaver 55 (draft  board vandals), SDS, Weather Underground and others were part of my assignment, so was fraud in public demolition projects, religious cults, corruption in the police department, doctors making mistakes and more. Thanks to Bruce Taylor for mentoring and editing my first investigative documentary.

     Thanks to Chris Duffy for hiring me to set up an investigative team at the NBC station and to my news boss Bob Campbell for giving us time and resources to do the job of investigating the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and their paramilitary operations and recruitment of students, medical straight jacketing and neglect in state mental hospitals, fraud in public housing, the political use of Grand Juries, more police corruption in yet other communities, toxic waste dumping involving mobsters and a well known trucking union, illegal chemical recycling, the failures of busing to end segregation, drug smuggling, another round with a religious cult, criminal motor cycle gangs, Soviet and Chinese spying on defense contractors and in University research labs, lagging efforts at locating MIA's, Muslim "charitable" groups as cover for bringing "students" to the US and more. My trusted colleagues were Ben Strout and Steve Starnes. We had each other's back more times than I wish to recall.

     Thanks to John Hendricks founder of Discovery and TLC and program executive Steve Cheskin for buying and commissioning programs from my documentary company ranging from political assassins, training with Snipers, training with FBI Agents, to archaeological digs in the jungles of the Caribbean and work in Africa. Thanks to Mark Nisenbaum, Megan Fisher, Alan Bucksot, Brian Ho, Jung Park, Ted Coats and Eric Harvey.

     Thanks to Scott Blumenthal for hiring me into LIN Television and permitting me to set up a CBS affiliate investigative team where we pursued Department of Transportation practices and costs, laxity of security in airports, airlines and freight haulers, security weaknesses at federal installations including the world's largest nerve gas depot, security gaps and lack of oversight in the commercial food chain, and many more. It was in this posting I directed my last investigative effort that won a Peabody and alerted the world to military command decisions that resulted going for the cheap in the head gear worn by US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq where brain injuries and head trauma sky rocketed. Thanks to Doug Garrison a former FBI agent who I appointed to run the team that included Karen Hensel, Loni McKown, Rick Dawson, Pam Elliot with help from my Assistant News Director Kevin Finch and Executive Producer Stacy Conrad and editor Doug Moon.

       I'm on this memory lane because of the great film Lana and I watched with our youngest daughter. SPOTLIGHT tells the story of the Boston Globe's I-Team's breaking of the Catholic Priest pedophile epidemic and the role of the Church, and others in Boston, in covering it up. It is an extraordinary film and features brilliant performances by Liev Schreiber, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Stanley Tucci, John Slattery and Mark Ruffalo. I think Ruffalo and Keaton deserve Oscar nominations. 

       I hope tens of millions of people see it, not only to memorialize the valiant efforts of the Boston Globe team, but also to pay tribute to real journalism, which seems to be shrinking in the face of modern media penchant for hype hustle, personality, bombast and shill. 
       Like my colleagues those who engage in investigative reporting sacrifice a lot, endure unique pressures and put a lot on the line. Those executives who permitted time and resources could have made other choices that would have been easier, cheaper and not fraught with legal reviews. Instead they trusted. That is special.

      In this season of gratitude I wish to thank my wife Lana and daughters Kristin and Katherine for "sharing me" with years of reporting, pre-occupation, missed family time, stress, risk and immersion in the belief that trying to get at the truth and reporting facts makes a difference in the world.

      Investigative reporting is important. It is hard work, costly, risky and there is much less of it now than there used to be. That is a shame. I'm grateful for what there is of it and for my small role in having been about that kind of work.

   See you down the trail.