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The Lynching of Ahmaud Arbery

5/12/2020

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It was at 1:00 PM in the full light of a sunny day on February 23rd, 2020. In the Georgia community of Satilla Shores on Satilla Drive, reports came into the Glynn County dispatcher’s office of a break-in. The man in question was a 25-year-old African American named Ahmaud Arbery. 

Ahmaud Arbery, only minutes later, would be chased down by a father and son team of rednecks who murdered him in the middle of Satilla Drive. For 59 days, no action was taken by law enforcement. 

Simply Out for a Jog
The events were as follows. Around 1:00 p.m. Arbery was out for a jog. He slowed to a walk on Satilla Drive and stopped to look at a new home under construction. He did not illegally enter the home nor did he take anything from the construction site. But an old white man across the street stepped into his front yard and watched Arbery. The young man left the property without being ordered and without engaging anyone in conversation. He resumed his jog.

Immediately, a call came into the Glynn County dispatcher’s office. 
Dispatcher: And you said someone is breaking into it right now? 
Caller: No, it's all open. It's under construction. And he's running right now. Here he goes right now. 
Dispatcher: OK, what is he doing? 
Caller: He's running down the street. 

White People Panic
The simple action of running away caused white people to react. 

The old white man standing in his yard was Gregory McMichael, a retired police officer. His son, Travis McMichael, was with him. Gregory McMichael was the one who made the call. The McMichaels grabbed a handgun and a shotgun and jumped into a pickup truck and started chasing Ahmaud Arbery.

They chased Arbery and tried to cut him off. Each time, Mr. Arbery simply ran around the truck. The McMichaels got in front of him with the truck and Travis McMichael blocked Arbery’s path, brandishing a shotgun. Arbery tried to avoid him but the two of them wound up wrestling for the shotgun. 

Three shots were fired and Ahmaud Arbery was killed in the middle of Satilla Drive. 

No Investigation
There was no investigation by the Glenn County police Department or the district attorney's office because Gregory McMichael had been a police officer in Glenn County comma the Department first responsible for investigating the case. 

Two district attorneys recused themselves because Gregory McMichael had been a member of their team. In fact, the second District Attorney said that Travis McMichael acted in self-defense. He said it was “perfectly legal to let two armed white men pursue an unarmed young black man.” 

The second DA’s document—and I have seen it—reads as follows.
“While we know that Mr. McMichael had his finger on the trigger, we do not know who caused the firings.” Firings. Plural. 
There were three shots fired. 

The weapon carried by Travis McMichael was not an automatic shotgun. It was a pump-action 12-gauge. So, you're telling me that McMichael was able to pump another shell into the chamber while Ahmaud Arbery caused the firings? And McMichael was able to do that twice? 

Videos Surface
It looked like the case was going to be buried by the COVID-19 news. Eventually, however, two videos were released. I have watched them both. 

The first video was a surveillance video taken from the home immediately at the right of the McMichaels’ home. In the 22-minute video Mr. Arbery shows up near the 13-minute mark. You see him slow to a walk, look at the new construction and walk up to it and look at it. You also see McMichael stepping into his front yard and leaning against a tree. No words are exchanged and Arbery walks off the construction site and begins to jog again. McMichael immediately disappears into his house, apparently to place the phone call to the dispatchers office.

No break in and no illegal trespassing, 

The next video was released only recently. It was actually recorded by a friend of the McMichaels. That friend turned it over to his attorney, Alan Tucker. Tucker then leaked the video. When asked if he thought that video was going to help the McMichaels, Tucker replied, “I thought it was going to help the truth.” 
Bravo.

The Community and the Governor React
The community rose up in anger. Georgia’s governor got involved and directed the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to examine everything. The McMichaels were arrested and, on Friday, May 8, 2020, both McMichaels were charged with murder and aggravated assault. 

Everyone wants to see justice done. But this isn't just about two inbred crackers in Georgia acting on their own racial hatred. It's more than that. 

The Legacy of Slavery
That case was almost buried. Georgia law enforcement, at least on a County level, was not going to investigate one of their own—one of their own being former law enforcement and white—in order to bring justice to a murdered young African-American man. 

Over 150 years after the abolition of slavery, over 60 years after the end of Jim Crow laws, the stench of white supremacy is still unbearable. Even though slavery is over, we still have slave patrols—those deputized white men who freely patrol the streets looking for African-Americans who are “not where they are supposed to be.” 

Too many times law enforcement would use a code on their reports when an African-American was murdered. They would write on their report NHI. No humans involved. And that's the way Whites, especially white law enforcement, viewed our African-American brothers and sisters. Or, at least, my African-American brothers and sisters. I won't speak for you. 
​
Let's call this what it is. Caught on video, Ahmaud Arbery was lynched. 

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On the Passing of Don Shula

5/5/2020

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On Monday morning, May 4, 2020,  I woke up to the news that legendary NFL Hall of Fame coach Don Shula had passed. The Miami Dolphins confirmed in a statement, "Don Shula was the patriarch of the Miami Dolphins for 50 years. He brought the winning edge to our franchise and put the Dolphins and the city of Miami in the national sports scene.”

As of Monday night, no details about his death were provided. It was said that died peacefully. He had suffered a few scares like the 2011 blood clot that had moved through his heart and lungs. In 2016, he had been hospitalized for fluid retention.

Still, he got around. He made it to the White House for the honoring of the perfect-season 1972 team. He went to see his son Mike coach the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50. He was still a presence everywhere he went.

Growing Up in Florida
When I was a kid, Florida (where I grew up) didn’t have a football team. The Dolphins didn’t come around until 1966. So, my first favorite team was the Green Bay Packers. Everybody loved the Packers. Who doesn’t love a winner? Especially in the 1960s.

When the Dolphins did arrive, it was one long, slow, agonizing ride to any kind of winning. That is, until they hired Don Shula as head coach. Then things turned around.

Shula's Career
Shula had played in the NFL for seven seasons with the Cleveland Browns, Baltimore Colts, and Washington Redskins before moving on to coaching. He served as the Colts' head coach for seven years and led the team to an NFL championship victory in 1968, only to get dropped by Joe Namath and the New York Jets in Super Bowl III. He took over in Miami in 1970 and stayed with the Dolphins for 26 seasons.

I remember him pacing the sidelines with his arms folded across his chest with that lantern jaw set firmly in place. You know, he once broke that famous jaw in a game when he played for Baltimore. He didn’t even know that he had broken it until he went to dinner that night and realized that he couldn’t chew his beef.

I love guys like that. In the 1979 Super Bowl, LA Rams defensive end Jack Youngblood broke his leg and didn’t tell anybody until the game was over. Or Muhammad Ali getting his jaw broken by Ken Norton and continuing the fight until the end.

Coach Shula was just that demanding on his players, too, once demanding the Dolphins practice in the Florida hear four times per day without water. He got the best out of them and made them the best. Twice, at least.

The '72 Perfect Season
But then there was that incredible 1972 Dolphins team: Griese, Morris, Csonka, Warfield, Kiick, Jake Scott, Buoniconti, and all the rest. What so many forget is that QB Bob Griese was sidelined with an injury for most of that season and the captain’s duties were handed to aging Earl Morrall. Now that was the guy who saved the 1972 perfect season. And Shula never let anybody forget it.

That year, the Dolphins went 17-0 and ended with a defensive battle to a 14-7 win over Washington. The only perfect season in NFL history.

Winningest Coach Ever
Shula was the winningest coach in NFL history, too. He compiled a 328-156 win-loss record. He retired in 1996 and the next year was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Even in his darkening years, Shula was as calm and peaceful as one could hope. He lived in Indian Creek overlooking Biscayne Bay in Miami. He had all kinds of personal trophies like replicas of his two Super Bowl trophies, photographs with Presidents Nixon, Ford, Clinton; 32 seasons’ worth of game plans neatly filed away in cabinets with the game plans from the 1972 season, the perfect one, kept in a safe. 

“He’s happy, he’s fulfilled, he’s done the things he wants to do and he’s enjoying every minute of his life,” his wife, Mary Anne, said during a Sports Illustrated visit to their home in 2013. “He is a very spiritual man, and he’s at peace with the world.”I still have that magazine.

Shula as Coach
He talked about becoming a coach, saying, “I played seven years, and I always knew how I wanted to be treated as a player, so when I became a guy in charge, I wanted to make sure I treated my players the way I wanted to be treated when I was a player: hard work, have fun and compete and win.”

He talked about finding different ways to win: “That’s what I think coaching is all about, is analyzing the talent that you have to work with and then putting them in a position where they get the most out of their talent. And a great example is Bob Griese and Dan Marino. Griese was a field general, a thinking man’s QB, and if we threw it 8 or 10 times in a game, that was a lot for Griese. He’d hand the ball off to Larry Csonka or Mercury Morris or Jim Kiick and then he’d throw to [Paul] Warfield, play-action to Warfield. Then when we got Marino, we handed it off occasionally, but he wanted to throw it on every down. When I talk about Marino, I in my mind talk about him being the best pure passer that’s ever played the game.”
​

Richard Neville, Duke of Warwick, was reported to have said, “Better to be a king-maker than to be a king.” I think Coach Shula would say that about great players.
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    Travis

    Some things you need to tell yourself or bring to remembrance. This page serves that purpose for me.

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