The police, the student and that South Carolina classroom
by Jordan Cooper
There are three things that alarm citizens throughout the world the most. The first thing is going to jail because it queries your integrity and lessens economic opportunity for many people. The second thing is being financially destitute because that limits your happiness and the chance for your offspring to have a good life. The third thing is not having the civil rights and liberties that have been given to you upon birth in this nation.
The main elements are to work, worship, and gain wisdom as you’d like to. In America those supposedly inherent human rights are overstepped everyday since we have made a footprint in this New World.
Native Americans have lost much of their land. Hispanics have lost rights to gain citizenship. Blacks and others have lost the right to eat and be where they want to be located physically in society.
That young girl being wrestled out of her seat while she was trying to get an education at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina was worst treatment than Rosa Parks had on that public bus in Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama. She didn’t know what to expect from the cop due to the brutal beat-downs on Martese Johnson and other minorities around America.
I had to do a double take because the confrontational police officer already had a few civil lawsuits against him. So, it surprised me that his comportment hadn’t changed since those close calls with being terminated from ever policing again.
My dad was the first black state trooper assigned to Berkeley and Charleston counties when he joined in 1979, and he’s never been on the wrong side of an incident of this magnitude.
I pray, hope, and wish that this happening can change the attitude and actions of police across America to protect and serve. Our patrolmen need to learn how to control their reactions to better serve our neighborhoods. We need more Andy Sipowicz and
Ricardo Tubbs-like characters monitoring our communities.
Jordan Cooper is a USC graduate who played football under Coach Steve Spurrier. He was the youngest African American to serve on a gubernatorial campaign staff at the age of 13 under then Congressman Bobby Jindal as his Co-Chair for Blacks for Jindal. He was the first African American to serve in the Gov. and Lt. Gov’s offices in S.C. as a Constituent Correspondent and Special Assistant respectively (Haley/Bauer). He was also the youngest to serve in on a GOP presidential campaign staff in America and youngest black Co-Chair of a Congressional campaign (Bauer for Congress 2012). More recently, he has been working with Jeb Bush’s youth outreach campaign and at their request has submitted several policy and speech ideas for Jeb Buish on various subjects. He recently served as an occasional campaign speechwriter for Jeb Bush and some of his material on tax policy was used.