Kremer Corner: Is America in for better times

Jerry Kremer

During the next few weeks my family will celebrate the 100th year since our parents, two teenagers, migrated to the United States to begin a new life and hopefully a better one. They carried all their belongings in one suitcase and left their parents behind in a small village in Romania. They made the lonely voyage not knowing what fate would befall them.

Through unpredictable circumstances, they met in New York City at a function held by an organization of former residents of the same village.

Luckily for me they married and raised two sons. Eventually, they made their way to Long Island where they lived most of their productive years. From time to time during my childhood, I would experience occasional taunts about my religion and I would bump into barriers that friends of other religions never had to endure.

In the 1950s and beyond, I experienced an occasional incident of anti-Semitism in various places, but I chose to ignore them. Once during my tenure in Albany, I had a face-to-face encounter with a now-deceased Assemblymember, who cursed at me using all of the time-worn religious slanders that I had been warned to expect by my parents.

But somehow, I consider all of those insults mild and bland, compared to what our country is experiencing today.

Whether you wish to admit it or not we are now living our lives in a mean-spirited and cruel environment that becomes worse by the day. Anti-Semitism, once fairly dormant, has risen far above the surface, thanks to the growth of new hate groups who are flourishing due to the rhetoric of the 45th president.

But even worse is the ugly and persistent assaults on the life and liberty of millions of Black Americans.

The best example of what Black citizens have endured is the George Floyd trial. After more than a year of anxiety and protests, Derek Chauvin is now in handcuffs and awaiting a lengthy sentence, thanks to a panel of very brave jurors.

But the thought that putting one bad cop behind bars will solve the hatred and the assaults on black Americans is pure fiction. Not a day goes by without some report of an arrest that went bad and some citizen usually black is the victim of the meanness that is dominating American society.

During the last 50 plus years, this country has experienced decades of racism with the black community as the target. There are not many people around who remember Alabama’s Gov. George Wallace standing on the steps of the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963 attempting to stop two black students from attending that school.

It took 100 National Guard members, on the orders of President John F. Kennedy, to force Wallace to retreat. One day later civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in Jackson, Miss.

Story after story of government cruelty to black citizens fill up the history books. Countless numbers of black individuals have suffered at the hands of a few rogue cops who were never been charged with crimes or were acquitted by runaway juries. The reputations of the good cops, who go about their duties each day with the determination to dispense fair justice, have been sullied by the few misfits.

The one vehicle available to all Americans to show their displeasure with government overreach is under daily assault.

The Constitution protects peaceful protest, but it hasn’t stopped legislators in 34 states from introducing 81 bills to stop people from standing on a public street to express their First Amendment grievances.

In Minnesota, lawmakers are pushing for a bill that provides that anyone convicted of unlawful assembly cannot hold a state job or receive student loans or unemployment insurance.

The George Floyd trial may be a wake-up call to curb the current excesses of discrimination. Or regrettably, it may be just another brief flash of hope for results that will never happen. America is a great country blessed with so many good virtues.

It isn’t too much to expect some type of awakening of the better angels.

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