Black Nashville Man’s Neighbors Join Forces To Help Him Walk His Dog

All of us have found ourselves in need at one time or another, and no matter how difficult it may be to ask others for help, the time inevitably comes when we must. But all of us would likely prefer that we don’t have to ask. It hurts our pride and wounds our heart to have to admit that we are unable to do anything, but there should be no shame in it; after all, we are human, every one of us. Well, this is a story of a man in need, and not just any man. This man needed help, not because he was ill or incapacitated. He needed help because he feared for his safety when he walked his dog. Why? Well, that’s the worst part of all. The man was afraid to walk his dog because he was black. According to The Today Show on MSN.com, Nashville resident Shawn Dromgoole, 29, posted his fears to his neighborhood’s Nextdoor page (Nextdoor is an app which provides a platform for neighbors to communicate with other registered members in their neighborhood). In the post he expressed his apprehension about even walking his dog due to the fact that he is a black man; his fears are centered on the recent death of George Floyd while in police custody.

Fearing Who You Are

Dromgoole and his family have resided in the same house, on the same street, for fifty-four years, says Today.com. While most would feel safe in that living situation any other time, well, this isn’t any other time. The recorded death of Floyd, which was allegedly the direct result of police mistreatment and was recorded on a bystander’s cell phone, has spurned much backlash from the public. Ex-officer Derek Chauvin held his knee down on the unarmed Floyd’s neck for a period of nine minutes, timed by the bystander’s recoding. Floyd repeatedly told officers that he could not breathe. The outcome is the public’s rage, expressed in a variety of forms, from looting to fires, and even more deaths since the looting began. Floyd’s death was the catalyst for an angry public who says they have had enough of the brutality, yet the general public is frightened to live their lives due to it all. Shawn Dromgoole is black, and the violence that has resulted from the Memorial Day death of Floyd has many unwilling to risk their own lives for any reason. Even if that reason is only to walk their pets. So, Dromgoole made his post, shared his feelings with others on the platform who lived around him, and then went on with his life. But unbeknownst to Shawn, this wasn’t the end of the story.

A Powerful Post

Dromgoole’s post was impactful, to say the least. In it he stated plainly that he had considered walking around one day, but he was afraid he wouldn’t make it home alive. This fear prompted him to stay at home that day, but when he thought about walking the next day he found himself frozen with fear again. His mother agreed to walk with him, but he found himself toting identification along and clinging to his cell phone. At the end of his post Dromgoole hashtags, ‘I can’t breathe’, ‘I can’t sleep’, and ‘I can’t walk’. These are the sad words of a man afraid to leave the confines of his home for safety’s sake. Well, that post, which you can read a copy of on the Today.com link above, managed to get the attention of a lot of people. Sure, we know about it on a national level now, and who knows how far it has really gone, but the point is that it reached the people that mattered the very most:

The Result of Reaching Out

The good news is that even though all of us are angry about what happened to George Floyd, not all of us are looting over it. According to People.com, Dromgoole made his post, but it wasn’t simply read and then forgotten about, left to float around in cyberspace. Instead, people paid attention, and soon he received an offer for a walking companion while he walked his dog. Then came another offer, then yet another. Before long, Dromgoole had received more than fifty responses to his post, “My neighbor[s] said, ‘We’ll walk with you’, one after one,” he said. “I was scared to walk alone, and now look who’s behind me; look who has my back.” Shawn went on to explain that he doesn’t feel he did anything to get the responses, per se; he just wanted to be able to walk in his own neighborhood. But he added that if his post altered the way others see him or feel about him, well, he’s all for it.

It’s Really In Our Hands

This is a story with a moral, and a vital one, at that. Things happen everyday, all over the world, that we don’t agree with; things that anger us and make us want to lash out in response. But the truth of the matter is that all lashing out ever succeeded in doing was breeding more of the same: Violence, intolerance, impatience, and yes, hate. But the truth of the matter is that nothing can take place that we don’t set into motion. When one displays anger, violence, and hate, responding with it continues to feed the very demon we claim to be fighting against. As Martin Luther King, Jr. stated so eloquently, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”  If you want to dispel the darkness, you must become the light. WE must become the light. It’s likely safe to say that the neighbors who live around Shawn Dromgoole have that all figured out. It looks like they are willing to become the beacon on the hill in a time of distress.

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