Elizabeth Miri | The Monarch Ranger
In the summer of 2020, there was intense nationwide uproar caused by the circumstances of the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer. On June 2, 2020, a rally took place in Houston, Texas, to raise awareness of the issue of excessive force in law enforcement. But this rally had a bright spot that was missed in the national conversation at the time.
Simeon Bartee attended the Houston rally with his wife and five year old daughter, Simone. Bartee posted on twitter that “During the protest in Houston yesterday, one of the police officers noticed my daughter crying.” He said that when the officer noticed, he knelt down next to her to comfort her.
Simone asked the officer, “Can we protest?” The officer answered, “You can protest, you can march, you can do whatever you want - just don’t break nothing.”
Simone’s dad later posted “I just want to tell the officer thank you for giving me a different perspective on what police officers, the good police officers, are like.” The kindness shown by this officer proves a very important point about how we should treat one another.
Even though those at the rally disagreed with the officers protecting the event about some things, everyone involved was still able to be civil to one another.
Just because we sometimes disagree with each other doesn’t mean we have to be violent or rude to the other party. We must respect others’ right to have an opinion, even if we think it is wrong.
As the legendary basketball coach John Wooden once said, “We can agree to disagree, but we don’t need to be disagreeable.”
No matter what others think about different issues, we should always treat them with the respect and dignity that we all deserve. All of us deserve to be treated as we would like to be treated.
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