“I Am Optimistic” by: Eric Elmore, Marketing Director, Drucker & Scaccetti and CCPA Secretary

Who am I?  I am a proud board member and officer of the Center City Proprietor’s Association.  I am a Black man in America. I am a father to two scared young Black men. I am a victim of police brutality. I am tired of hearing the same human rights issues addressed by the likes of Frederick Douglass in the 1870s, W.E.B. DuBois in the 1920s, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the 1950s and 60s, to no avail. Even with all this going on across America, I am, most of all, optimistic. Here’s why…

To get to where we want to be as a nation, we must first have a firm grasp from where we came.  Social inequality, brutality, ignorance, rioting, and pushing a people to the brink is not a new occurrence in America. Lest we forget, it is how our nation was founded. 

In March of 1770, members of the British Army shot and killed several colonists in Boston (including Crispus Attucks, a Black man, and by many accounts, the first to die in the American Revolution) who were protesting several pieces of legislation, including increasing taxes without representation. The soldiers fired without an order by their superior officer. The remaining protestors dispersed but, came back the next few days to continue their protest. Six of the soldiers were eventually acquitted; two were convicted of manslaughter and given reduced sentences. Does this have a familiar ring in today’s headlines?

Fast forward three years to 1773. Colonists remained uneasy with no representation in Parliament and a continued disdain for punitive and biased legislation. Fed up, a group of colonists targeted tea shipments on three vessels in Boston Harbor, a warehouse in Cape Cod and a tea shop. All three venues were vandalized, suffered significant property damage, and most tea was dumped into the harbor or stolen. Now, we call this looting and it outrages us all.

Today, both the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party are viewed as acts of martyrdom, patriotism, heroism, and the beginning of the great experiment called the United States of America. What these historical incidents demonstrated was that when people have had enough, diplomacy can turn to chaos. It’s what we are witnessing across the United States today in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd…people fed up, looking for change and, sometimes, resorting to violence to express themselves and effectuate change.

Who am I? I am a man who detests violence; whether by today’s rioters, police, or by the colonists and British soldiers 250 years ago. I am a man with a clear vision of where I would like our country to be, and how I would like it to treat all its citizens. I am a man grateful to live in a country where I can write an essay like this without the threat of imprisonment by our government. And, I have a clear understanding that I would not have this right today if the colonists had not stood up to the great wrongs of their day in the way they did.

In 2020 America, a new movement has begun. And, this time, the feeling in the air is different. The protestors and demanders of change look different. This time, the world is with us and History has her quill at the ready to write something spectacular, once again. Therefore, I am optimistic; and I think real change is coming—in law, in practice, and in hearts.

I think the colonists may have felt the same way. What they endured, physically, financially, and legislatively, between 1770 and the American Revolution’s end, some 13 years later, helped to create a better nation. 

Who am I? I am an American, and I have faith that together we are about to move many steps closer to becoming a more-perfect Union.