Never before have I been so happy to sit in bumper-to-bumper-to-bumper traffic; certainly not while residing in the New York metropolitan area for the first half-century of my life, before moving to Vancouver in 1994. The occasion was the Car Rally for Black Lives sponsored by the Vancouver NAACP and YWCA Clark County, which took place June 6.
It was to begin at noon at the Town Plaza on East Mill Plain, so I decided to get there early, at 11:30 a.m. Well, I didn’t get into the parking lot until about 12:30 p.m., and didn’t get out of the lot until 2:15 p.m. It was 3:30 p.m. before I reached the endpoint, the Port of Vancouver Terminal 1. Most cars had signs referencing the scourge of racism that plagues our country. Many had children and dogs; horns were blaring, people were waving. All along the route, hundreds of people, waving their own signs, encouraged the gathering.
The good citizens of Vancouver have gotten the message. Never before have I been so proud of my community!
