As time is running out for President Donald Trump‘s term, anger and tension are at a fever pitch and has boiled over along racial and political lines. What’s more, Wednesday’s impeachment of Trump doesn’t appear to have quelled any agitation. And despite being impeached for a historic second time, President Trump will finish out his term in a matter of days.
Still, attempts to tamp down the country’s dark mood incited by Trump’s words are at the forefront.
The concern about armed violence leading into Inauguration Day is a reality as thought leaders are trying to figure out what to do to drastically turn the atmosphere around.
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Former Baltimore City Mayor Kurt Schmoke and President of the University of Baltimore says there should be a commission formed like former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Kerner Commission. It was an eleven-member panel that was formed to study urban unrest in 1968. The report’s findings said the United States was “two countries, one Black, one white, separate and unequal.” The report did not move the racial needle as expected after the election of President Richard Nixon who did not work to implement the commission’s recommendations.
Schmoke also points to the 9/11 Commission which was formed after the 2001 terrorist attack that used planes as missiles to destroy the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon building in Washington — some of the nation’s great symbols of power. Much of the commission’s recommendations are currently enforced.
Texas Congressman Al Green tells theGrio he would like to see a “cabinet-level” post created that focuses solely on race matters. He likens it to the efforts in South Africa with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission formed after apartheid. “This next president ought to have a department of reconciliation so we can deal with what has been our Seminole sin. It has not been resolved. We need to deal with this,” says Green, speaking of matters of race and racism in America.
Read More: Rep. Al Green reacts to praise for early call to impeach Trump in 2019
Then there is Obama-era Education Secretary Arne Duncan who is promoting the need for more civics lessons. In an Op-Ed in the New York Daily News he says, “According to a 2018 report from the Center for American Progress, only nine states and the District of Columbia require a year of civics in order to graduate from high school. And while, about half of the state’s offer credit for community service, only Maryland and D.C. require it.”
The Op-Ed goes on to “call on our fellow Americans to relearn the lessons of American history so as to prevent the kind of madness we have experienced since Donald Trump descended that escalator more than five years ago.” One of the most surprising findings of the 2016 Annenberg Study is that “only 26 percent of Americans can name all three branches of government.” Those three branches are the Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary.
Then there are those calling for collaborations between civil rights organizations. Discussions are underway with the NAACP and the ADL, which are already working as a coalition to get Facebook to “Stop Hate For Profit.”
Ultimately the goal is to achieve racial and political change and sound the alarm on domestic terrorism, including bomb and armed threats, before and on Inauguration Day.
Meanwhile, Dr. Tony Allen, the president of Delaware State University, and Chair for the Biden Inaugural committee says the Jan. 20 inauguration ceremony will be held outside to show that the peaceful transfer of power is stronger and more powerful than the threats and actions of Jan. 6.
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