The Morgantowner: June 2020

Tuesday, June 23, 2020

My Confession

I thought about my response to the demonstrations and the "Black Lives Matter" movement. But leaders of the movement said we should listen, not talk. An opinion piece in last Sunday's Washington Post said that white people, when confronted with racism, form book clubs. I don't do book clubs, but I do read. I lately finished Ta-Nehisi Coates' We Had Eight Years In Power, with essays he wrote during the Obama presidency, with new commentary. I also read Matthew Desmond's Evicted, a non-fiction study of housing issues in Milwaukee, and a Pulitzer-prize winner.

I used to feel not guilty about race issues because my family didn't live in the United States during slavery, and although I grew up in racist Maryland in the 1950s and 1960s, my parents were from New York, and therefore removed from all that. Still, my parents got a good deal on a small suburban house in 1953. If you were a veteran, you could buy a house for just over $11,000, one hundred dollars down and seventy-five dollars a month for twenty-five years. The only other condition was that you had to be White. Black people didn't live on our street until 1968, by which time I was in college. The builder of our house was a "liberal." He would sell houses to Jews, when others building in that area would not. We had all new schools where we lived; people I knew in Baltimore City, just a few blocks from where we lived in Baltimore County, went to older schools. Jewish people fled the City as the schools integrated and eventually became all Black. My class at Woodlawn High had six Black students out of 450. Forest Park High, just as close to our house as Woodlawn, but in Baltimore City, had twenty-two White students in my graduation year. My girlfriend at the time, Seema, went to Forest Park. Her single mother had to move from their rental apartment in Lower Park Heights when the building was sold, and they ended up in a new apartment building near where I lived. Seema would have gone to Woodlawn with me senior year, but chose to pay tuition to finish at Forest Park. I went to her prom, and we had a great time. She was friends with everyone in her class.

I did well on standardized tests, but I was never a good student. If I had been Black at Woodlawn, I might have had a problem. While in college, I took a test for a summer job at the post office. Two of us, both Jewish students from my neighborhood, scored best on the test and got work. The test was hard, like an SAT. People who worked at the post office could not have passed it. If you could do basic alphabetization and filing and had a good back, you could do that job. I was grateful for the work, but even then I knew some poor kid, Black or White, needed that job more than I did. A few years earlier, the post office had moved from a point in the city near the end of several bus lines, to the county, where bus service was scarce at best. I didn't have a car, but I had to drop off my mom somewhere before work, or she had to drop me. The other kid and I were able to carpool sometimes.

Two stories I remember from my mother. She moved to Baltimore at nineteen as a new bride. She took a job selling womens' hats at Hutzler's department store downtown. One day a Black woman came in and asked to try on a hat. My mother helped her with the hat, but after the woman left, her boss came over and told her that Black people were not allowed to try on clothes in the store. My mother was surprised, but she was new in town and didn't question it. In our new house, my mother got a job teaching school, and after a few years, started teaching at the school my sister and I attended. Never one for housework, or staying home, she hired someone to clean the house and watch us kids. Mom told me that she explained to one of these "colored girls" that. she could open a can of tuna or bring something for her lunch. The woman said "Where's my plate and fork?," and my mother said "Just take a plate and fork." The woman said "That's not how we do here. I have to have my own plate and fork." My mother didn't understand at first.

Many of the places we went as kids did not serve Black people. I was fifteen before I saw a Black person in a restaurant, at the bowling alley, or a movie theater. There were businesses on Pennsylvania Avenue and Gay Street in Baltimore for Black people. Price's Dairy, Gwynn Oak Amusement Park and Milford Mill Pool were near us; Black people could not go to these places. Our synagogue used to sponsor special days at Gwynn Oak, where you could get a sticker to go on most of the rides for a dollar. That ended when a five-year-old asked to bring his friend. The friend was Black and the Dad argued with the staff at Gwynn Oak about what harm would come from a five-year old being admitted to the park. The synagogue never went back. Milford Mill was a stone quarry that had filled with water when the workers hit an underground spring. An entrepreneur from Florida created a beach and eventually built an indoor and outdoor pool, and a snack bar with a killer juke box. There were dances on weekend nights. We weren't allowed to go to the dances because it attracted a rough crowd of White kids from the city. School dances in the city were for Black kids by that time. After 1964, Milford Mill said it was a private club. You could get a guest membership for five dollars, and pay a buck every time you went, only you had to be White. Baltimore County didn't have public pools. Druid Hill Park in Baltimore City at one time had a White and a Black pool, but, in integrating the pools, they closed the Black pool, and the White pool became all Black. Lochearn, which was the neighborhood immediately next to ours, opened a swim club, and we thought we would go there, until our parents found out that they would not accept Jews as members. Eventually, there were private Jewish swim clubs, and that's where my parents went. At fourteen and fifteen, I went to Milford Mill, because those were the only two years I could go with friends before I started working in the summer at sixteen.

I understand that I have privilege, and I've used that throughout my life, sometimes unknowingly, other times fully understanding that I could do what Black people couldn't. Even today, I travel around to different, overwhelmingly White counties in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. I dress down, travel alone, leave the jewelry on my dresser and put on a local accent (not that. different from Baltimore). People have looked at me funny, but when they ask where I'm from, I smile and say "West Virginia," and that's usually enough to put people at ease.

I'm in a position to hold Morgantown's police accountable about racism. We are not like Baltimore, where the police have always been awful. I try to treat everyone equally and I am willing to listen to anyone about the limited power I have.

If you have a Google account, you can comment here, or on Twitter, where I am BarryLeeWendell. My City Council page on Facebook, Barry. Wendell for Morgantown Councilor, Ward Seven, is open. If you are a Facebook friend, we can talk there.

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

The. Demonstrations and The Pandemic

On May 25, a police officer in Minneapolis held his knee on George Floyd's neck, ultimately killing him. Other officers watched while Floyd. pleaded that he couldn't breathe. Floyd was on the ground, handcuffed and not resisting. The officers had. to know they were being recorded on a cell phone, but didn't think it would be a problem for them.

Once the video was released on social media, there were demonstrations, and at time riots in cities around the world. Rioters smashed storefronts and looted stores; a police station burned. Our American President accused "antifa" of organizing the riots, although some have said there were white supremacist groups behind much of the violence. In Washington, armed troops with no insignia lobbed pepper balls and rubber bullets at demonstrators and news reporters who were clearly marked. In Morgantown, there were major demonstrations several days last week. The Morgantown Police stayed away, thankfully. I didn't go, being afraid to be around so many people in the midst of a pandemic. When I finally did go one afternoon, there were very few people out and I didn't stay long. Judging from the pictures of the large demonstration in Morgantown, but more importantly in New York and Washington, I worry about people becoming ill from being in the large crowds.

Demonstration in downtown Morgantown

Demonstrators blocked High Street, our main street

May 31, before the street demonstrations here, I attended a "video demonstration" featuring the head of the NAACP locally, and three African-Americans, all state delegates, from different parts of the state. All of them have been harassed by the police, after being elected. Delegate Danielle Walker is in Morgantown. I was upset.

I asked the City Manager what stats there were on complaints about the department, the break down by race of drug arrests, and how many were sent to Municipal Court (a $15 fine for small amounts of cannabis, thanks to our Council) and how many to Magistrate Court. I also asked the ACLU if they had stats. I haven't heard back from the ACLU, but I got a response from the Police Chief and Deputy Chief. They have policies about being polite to everyone, banning chokeholds and other good things, no complaints lodged against them in the last year, and all cases going to Magistrate Court, which was a bit unsettling. Magistrate Court can give probation, but Municipal Court can't, which is the reason they gave me. Magistrate Court can also fine you $1,000 or six months in jail for carrying a small amount of cannabis.

Meanwhile, a video collective put out a release about a Black man who was badly beaten by the police in Morgantown. I read the article and found that the incident, eighteen months ago, was not in Morgantown, but in Westover, walking distance from downtown Morgantown, but with a different police force. I asked the collective to change the title of the video and they did. Now it says "...near Morgantown."

I've received a few dozen emails yesterday and today from people asking that we defund the Morgantown Police and spend more on social services. I only recognized two of the names, and I asked one of those to call me so we could talk about this. We do not have a big-city police department here, and, although the Morgantown Police are under City Council, where I am a member, the County Sheriff, West Virgina University Police and State Troopers also operate in our city. In the last two weeks, no one in Morgantown can say that our police interfered in the demonstrations. The police don't have the equipment that was used on demonstrators in Washington. We are not the kind of city where the police brutalize the public. Most of the letters say "I'm a Morgantown resident." I doubt that, and if they are, they have not been involved in any way with city government and do not understand what we have here. We do have serious drug issues and domestic abuse problems that the police deal with. We have tried to find an alternative to having the police take inebriates to the hospital; we do have people who intervene with addicts, and there is a needle exchange program. We are waiting for state approval to put up sharps containers. Our city is limited by state law and lack of money from doing more. Our police are not overpaid and the force is not fully staffed.

I had been visiting one county per month, in alphabetical order, within three hundred miles of Morgantown. I missed December to attend a funeral of a friend from synagogue, and I missed. January because I was sick almost the entire month. In February, I spent a full day and two nights in Harrisburg, in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.

I wrote here about my canceled trip in mid-March to Delaware, Ohio because. it was obvious that there was a health problem. We've rarely gone out since then. I've been running a bit almost every day. My former gym has reopened with restrictions, but I'm not ready for that. We get carry-out Saturday nights and sometimes for lunch.

This past Sunday was supposed to have beautiful weather, and I suggested to Joe that we visit Doddridge County, sixty-five miles southwest of here, originally on my schedule for a May visit. Doddridge has a population of less than 8,000 people, and more than eighty per cent of voters went for the current president in 2016. We walked around West Union, the county seat, stopping for lunch at Betty Noll's Restaurant, the only place open in the middle of town. We both had fried fish fillets with three sides. Joe had cole slaw, broccoli and fries; I had mac and cheese, corn and apple sauce. The food was good, if not exactly diet-conscious. We were able to see most of the town in about an hour of walking in the pleasant sunshine. Doddridge County is off U.S. 50 between Clarksburg and Parkersburg. The former B&O Railroad line is now a paved trail.

We walked into town less than a mile along the rail trail from a park off U.S. 50 to downtown. On the way back a gentleman stopped us on the trail He was in a bathrobe at 3 P.M. He lives down the hill from th trail and his family has been in the area since before the Civil War. He owns some gas wells on his property. He said he could tell we were not from West Union, he said. I asked how he knew that, and he answered diplomatically "You look smart." A friend in Morgantown also told me her ancestors lived in Doddridge before the Civil War. West Union was apparently a stop on the Underground Railroad.

After seeing the town, we searched for a restored covered bridge in Center Point, really out in the woods. We saw many houses festooned with banners with the name of the current President, one of which also flew a Confederate flag. Doddridge County is a center of fracking in the state. People say it is prosperous, but aside from the newer schools along U.S. 50 and a handful of big new houses along the country roads, it doesn't look it.

We were glad to get away for a day. Neither of us has been far from home since March. We wore masks, as did some of the people we saw, but Doddridge is one of two counties in West Virginia with no reported COVID-19 cases.

Update: the person I asked to call me about the police did call. I missed the call, and she, phone banking today for the election, said she will call back tomorrow. Also, the first case of COVID-19 in Doddridge was reported today (Tuesday afternoon) after a prisoner tested positive.