6/9/2020

Friend DJT,

            As your self-appointed Friend, I encourage you to change your mindset. It’s hard to do, but not impossible. You tend to pigeon hole people. This is an adaptive response. Animals in the wild need to avoid being eaten, so anything that looks like a predator is “bad” & anything that looks like its mother is “good.” Individuals who do this tend to survive.

            Fortunately, as humans capable of complex thinking, we don’t have to sort people into bad/good, criminal/lawful , friend/enemy,. We can instead embrace the complexity of our world & adopt a both/and perspective. Each person is both good & bad. Each person violates the law from time to time. Each person can be a frenemy.

            Right now, law enforcement has embraced the good/bad mindset & it’s not working. The “defunding” campaign is not about abolishing police departments. It’s about building a system with a different, more compassionate mindset.

            At your meeting yesterday, Livingston County Sheriff, Tony Childress, was alluding to that when he talked about the need for police to be a “friend of the community.” KY Atty Gnrl, Daniel Cameron, was, too, when he suggested police need “to become better citizens, to become better neighbors.” As African-Americans, they both want to see changes in the system.

            The released inmates from KY’s jails are proving that they aren’t permanent “criminals.” Only 4.6% of 6024 of released inmates have been rearrested. Lincoln County Jail went from being at 182% to 89% of capacity & the KY police are arresting fewer people and giving them citations instead. Yet, they still have “law & order” in the Bluegrass State. I believe this is evidence that we don’t need to lock people up under the presumption that they are “dangerous”.

            Luckily our brains are plastic – our minds can change. I encourage you to make an effort to resist labeling people today.

            HYITL,