Cleaver: Are We Just Standing There?

((In a newsletter to constituents, Fifth District Congressman Emanuel Cleaver says the problem with Congress is it is just standing there and doing nothing.)

As a sophomore student at Texas A&M at Prairie View, I hung out mostly with guys from Dallas and Fort Worth. Perhaps it was because I lived in that area during the first seven years of my life, and most of the Cleaver Clan still lived there.

One evening, a Friday, a fight broke out between some Dallas/Fort Worth students and some other Texas dudes. While I did not enter the brawl, I stood close, and to be honest, I did seriously consider stepping in. Because someone was injured, the Hemestead, Texas police investigated and arrested a number of students involved in a wholly pointless “gang” fight, including me. Yes, I was identified as a participant and found myself locked up in a second floor holding room in the Hemstead police headquarters.

After a couple hours in the slammer, the Dean of Men, Leroy Marion, arrived at the police station and explained to the arresting officer that I never engaged in the fighting, based on statements from other student witnesses. I was released without charges and into the Dean's custody. The ten mile ride back to the campus in his car was the most uncomfortable ride of my life. We traveled, it seemed, in slow motion, and I later swore that it was a six hour ride.

The Dean, I clearly remember, said, “I should have left you in jail with the fighters.” I quickly responded, “Dean, I didn’t do anything, I was just standing there.” Man, did he go off on me!

“Look, son, if that is what you are going to say for the rest of your life, you will end up dying at age 80 or so without having contributed even a boll of cotton to the world,” he said with disgust in his voice.

Then, he repeated what I had said, “I didn’t do anything, I was just standing there….that’s pitiful.” Arriving back on campus, he said, “get out of my car.” I shall never forget that experience.

When the history of our Congress is written and our dysfunctionality is described, debated, and dissected, how many of us will say to our grandchildren, “I didn’t do anything, I was just standing there?” The next generation will condemn us, I believe, not because many of us did not contribute to the politically poisonous polarization, but because we were just standing there.