God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State by Lawrence Wright

Author:Lawrence Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: politics, history
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2018-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

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THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MARCH had been assembled overnight. Although the march itself was peaceful, Jeff Hood, a white Baptist minister and co-organizer of the protest, had given voice to sentiments similar to those that Micah Johnson had expressed, calling police the enemy. “God damn white America!” Hood shouted through a bullhorn. “White America is a fucking lie!” The minister later explained, “We were interested in creating a space where anger could be let out.” Soon after Hood spoke, the killer began his assault. “Immediately when I heard the shots, I looked up and saw what I believed were two police officers that went down,” Hood said. “I grabbed my shirt. I felt like I might have been shot so I was feeling around. The sergeant [standing next to me] ran toward the shooting. I ran in the opposite direction. I was concerned about the seven or eight hundred people behind me. I was screaming, ‘Run! Run! Active shooter! Active shooter! Run! Run!’ ”

Chief Brown would note that within the Black Lives Matter march, there were about twenty or thirty people carrying rifles and ammo gear, some wearing gas masks and bulletproof vests. There’s no telling how many were carrying concealed weapons. They scattered like everyone else when the shots rang out. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, the prime mover in the liberalization of Texas gun laws, called those people “hypocrites.” Imagine what would have happened had they actually started firing. Many of the marchers believed that they were being targeted by the police; that was, after all, the reason they were protesting in the first place. There is raw footage from one of the television stations showing marchers screaming at the police during the siege. No doubt, in the confusion those armed protestors would have been aiming at the cops. While the Dallas assault was going on, cops had to track down each of the marchers who was openly carrying a weapon to make sure he or she wasn’t the shooter. It’s amazing that only five people were killed, all of them police officers, and nine other cops injured, along with two civilians.

Once again, the city was grieving, angry, and on edge. How would the world view Dallas now? At a candlelight vigil a few days after the killings, a detective next to me remarked, “One crazed person doesn’t represent the entire community,” although of course the lesson of Dallas in 1963 was that a single armed assassin could frame the reputation of a city for decades.

“We can choose to let the anger fester inside us,” said Senior Corporal Marie St. John, the partner of Michael Smith, one of those killed, “or we can take our agony and anguish and direct it toward good, toward fostering an environment of hope.” Officer Patrick Zamarripa was a navy veteran who had joined the police department in 2011 after three tours in Iraq. His fellow officer Josh Rodriguez recalled that the day his friend died, he had bought a meal for a homeless man who complained that his potato chips had been stolen.

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