Long Beach, This Is the Time. Seize It! by Melissa Morgan
PALACIO MAGAZINE | 2020
This essay by Melissa Morgan is part of a series of conversations that PalacioMagazine.com is calling “Hearing Many Voices.”
I remember sitting next to a police officer at a fundraising dinner years ago and being impacted by the way he talked about Black Lives Matter with so much disdain and disgust. He didn’t know who I was other than a Black woman sitting at the front of the room at a table of VIPs. He also didn’t know that I came to Long Beach to work with teenagers at a human relations organization focused on helping others unlearn bias, prejudice, and discrimination. He couldn’t know that one of the youths I had worked with and watched blossom would become one of the founders of the Black Lives Matters movement. There was no way he could know about my experiences with police or growing up in the south and seeing the KKK recruit in full gear with the American flag in hand and the police standing by their side. Neither of us knew that my then 14-year-old child would years later be shot by police after being pulled over in a car where he was a passenger. A Black man now, he is imprisoned with the bullet still in his arm.
This essay by Melissa Morgan is part of a series of conversations that PalacioMagazine.com is calling “Hearing Many Voices.”
According to a 2019 Washington Post survey of police shootings, “The rate at which black Americans are killed by police is more than twice as high as the rate for white Americans.” The newspaper also reported that Hispanic Americans (Latino/x) are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate (See data HERE).
I measure my opinion on poor police/community relations by how violently the police behave with black and brown people and how they disregard our lives and bodies. Skim through a Twitter or Instagram feed or news broadcast and we are bombarded with images of police pointing weapons at peaceful Americans protesting. Their strategy and tactics are violence. Police corral peaceful people, pushing them, instilling resentment and fear. Imagine instead, line police officers who speak to people in a respectful and de-escalating manner.
I recently spoke with Porter Gilberg who heads Long Beach’s LGBTQ+ Center (The Center) and is a commissioner on the Citizen Police Complaint Commission (CPCC). He shared that the community needs to “push the Mayor and City Council to remove the confidentiality requirements of the Commission.” Gilberg says the Commission must be empowered to uphold misconduct allegations with actual actions of accountability. “The Commission is prohibited by the City Attorney from openly discussing anything [Commissioners] review, any evidence [they] see, any deliberations [they] have, and any recommendations [they] make.” In the end, the City Manager can overrule any recommendation by the Commission.
It’s clear that police/community relations in Long Beach and our neighboring communities have not improved and have gotten worse. This is especially true when it comes to police interactions with the poor, with Black people, people with mental illness, and our youth. All of these issues are directly connected to bias. As a human relations professional, I know we are all biased. It takes active daily work to combat our biases personally and institutionally. To build a stronger Long Beach, we need to be willing to have uncomfortable, open, and honest conversations with ourselves, our neighbors, and our institutional leaders–regardless of our race. There are too many stories of Black families in Long Beach who have been victims of police brutality, harassment, and disrespect. Their voices are often ignored and need to be heard. Sadly, I think that we Black people have unconsciously accepted that this is just the way life is.
We are in a critical time in our city’s and nation’s history when our leaders and neighbors need to be bold and brave. We must make a change around race and class to be more equitable. Currently, 50% of our City’s budget goes to the police, 20% to Fire, and we can anticipate that there will be a push to cut the other community services that are critical for a healthy, thriving Long Beach. If residents don’t speak out, our public services will be cut in favor of more policing and more violence.
Our education system also faces a crisis. The gaps are widening more so now with the pandemic. People have accepted or ignored how poorly Black and Brown children are academically faring. They are already challenged in an environment where teachers often operate with their own biases. In our district, the data shows that our Black students have been disproportionately suspended and disciplined. Our educators need implicit bias training and there needs to be a divestment from school policing and investment in equity, social/emotional wellbeing and so much more.
In 2006, when I worked as the second Human Dignity Officer for the City of Long Beach in the City Manager’s Office (I was Gerry Miller’s last hire), the City and Police Department dedicated resources, funding, and attention towards many initiatives and programs: community policing, partnership building, youth and gang violence prevention, multi-day youth/police dialogues (where the police dressed-down, not in uniform). There were community group advisory boards to the police chief, hate crime education and response, human relations education, and interfaith leader engagement and crisis response. Also, we engaged our trained community volunteers as expert inter-group conflict resolution mediators. Still today, the community continues to cry out for more community health workers. We need more innovative ways to turn from policing to utilizing the rich assets that already exist in our residents and community-based organizations.
Did you know our local Black Lives Matter Long Beach group (led mostly by Black women) has been active for six years now? They are doing their best to advocate for Long Beach families who have lost loved ones to police violence, and to educate others, but they have continued to be shut out and disregarded, especially by our City leaders and Black faith leaders. Why? People have been too uncomfortable to talk about race, policing, and even intersectionality of gender and sexual orientation with race and violence. Our Black leaders of local institutions who have any voice are often too uncomfortable with the prospect of making White people uncomfortable because they hold major power and privilege in our institutions.
There was a time when the City convened together LBUSD, LBCC, CSULB, diverse nonprofit agencies, interfaith groups, and residents to collaborate on solving community challenges. It is time again for our city to bring people together and lead this incredibly diverse community in real equity and inclusion.
In addition to our people, we have incredible local resources in the LA County Commission on Human Relations, OC Human Relations, the Anti-Defamation League, the California Conference for Equality and Justice (CCEJ), Long Beach Forward, the City’s Equity Office, Californians for Justice, Black Lives Matter, as well as organizations that are working hard to dismantle racism and change the institution of policing for the better.
We have the history, the wisdom, the knowledge, the best practices, the data, the studies, the reports. Long Beach residents have everything we need to solve the problems staring us in the face. But our institutional leaders need to not just listen more deeply to people’s anguish, but call new people to the table, and stretch themselves to be inclusive of all voices from a variety of income levels and education levels–not just those of their “trusted partners.”
Long Beach, it’s time to unlearn everything we thought we ever knew. We need to learn to talk about race, anti-Blackness, White privilege, even White supremacy, so we can address our challenged community. This must be a priority. This is the Time. Seize It!
About Melissa Morgan
Melissa has a rich history of work in education, diversity and inclusion, civil rights, and youth-serving nonprofits. She is a relationship builder and solution seeker who values working closely with community leaders and institutions, businesses, philanthropists, grassroots groups, faith leaders, youth, and people of many backgrounds to find common ground and collaborative opportunities for the common good.
Melissa is dedicated to the betterment of our communities through the delivery of engaging leadership training, interactive strategic planning, dialogue-based human relations programming, and community service projects. Inspired by the values of compassion, equity, inclusion, restorative justice, respect, and dignity — she aspires to bridge understanding between people in workplaces, schools, and communities.
Melissa has a background in, and passion for anti-bias education, nonviolence, hate crime education, racial justice, youth empowerment, the arts, technology, marketing, and all things communications. Her professional experience has included work with the Anti-Defamation League, Orange County Human Relations Council, the Heart of America Foundation, the National Conference of Community and Justice, the Los Angeles Conservation Corps, and the City of Long Beach Human Dignity Program. She currently volunteers with her community’s Jewish Community Center and the NAACP.
Melissa grew up in the southern region of the U.S. and graduated from the University of North Florida. Upon graduation, she served as a Rotary Cultural Ambassadorial Scholar of Good Will in Merida, Venezuela, before making Southern California her home. She is a graphic designer/creative, an ally, a youth advocate, the mom of two awesome daughters, and a peacemaker at heart who wholeheartedly believes #blacklivesmatter.
For more information, visit AllThingsBlack.us
Original source: https://palaciomagazine.com/long-beach-this-is-the-time-seize-it-by-melissa-morgan/
