by Alex Symington…….

I took part in a march for police accountability last Sunday with about fifty other concerned citizens of Key West. It isn’t as if I WANTED to. I had plenty of more interesting things I could have done on a Sunday afternoon; projects backed up or books to be read or just a nice civilized afternoon nap with my dog. Movies, shopping, biking, sight seeing, picture taking, visiting friends or hanging out at the beach. You name it; it probably is more appealing than marching along in the hot sun losing your voice chanting things like, “What do we want to see? Police Accountability!” (Google Charles Eimers)

The next question you ask then, is why march at all? I wanted to explain to the handful of angry people I saw along the route that I was out there losing my voice and getting sore feet for them. I wanted to ask them if they thought I was having fun and just really enjoy exposing myself to angry people flipping me off. Did they think I was comfortable risking the wrath of those with unquestioning blind faith in all authority or the authorities themselves? The angry middle-finger-flippers only saw “trouble-makers”.

Two hundred and thirty eight years ago a group of concerned citizens got together and wrote the Declaration of Independence. In 1787, after the American Revolution, our Constitution was ratified by the Constitutional Convention. Four years after that the amendments to the constitution, the Bill of Rights, became part of that constitution. All this was accomplished by trouble makers and people unwilling to accept the status quo.

In our Bill of Rights, it states, of those rights is “the right to peaceably assemble” and “petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.” Our corporate sponsored congress is busy chipping away at these rights. We the people can and should exercise our historic spirit of justice as long as we can and when we no longer can we’ll know the experiment of American Democracy failed.

So, you see, I did not WANT to march, I HAD to march.

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