Member-only story
“They Can’t Do That!”
But they are
I can’t quote it exactly, but it goes something like this: “First they came for [fill in the blank,] but that was okay. Then they came for [fill in the blank,] but that was okay, too. Then they came for me.”*
Most of us have taken our civil rights for granted all our lives. Police can’t just bust down our door and take us off to some prison somewhere and leave us there. We can go about our daily lives freely, going where we want to go, doing what we want to do, as long as it’s legal. Unless we’re Black or Hispanic looking, we won’t be pulled over by the police unless we did something wrong or a light is out on our cars, or, in one case I know of, our license plate is so muddy the policeman can’t read it.
I’m a 73-year-old white woman. I’ve never been pulled over by the police, and the only tickets I’ve ever gotten were parking tickets (and only two of them.) Oh, I read about a woman with children in the car being pulled over and tased for seemingly no reason. I always have my license and registration in the car with me, just in case I’m stopped. If I was pulled over, I know I don’t have to get out of the car, that it might be dangerous if I did. But those aren’t things I worry about every day. I’ve lived my life knowing I have rights and trusting the system with my safety.
