SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — If you ask Don Logan about February 2004, he says he thought a change in the civil rights movement and race relations had come.
“I thought we were making progress, I really did,” Logan said.
At the time, Logan was the director of the Diversity Office at the City of Scottsdale. On February 26, 2004, he received a mail bomb sent to him by a white supremacist.
“Coming to grips with the realization that someone had made an attempt on my life that was a dose of reality for me,” Logan said. “Quite frankly, our job wasn’t done.”
Now, in the weeks following the death of George Floyd, protests have been held across the country calling for change and reform as the Black Lives Matter movement gains momentum.
“I’ve seen protests before, but this is different,” Logan said. “We can't sit idly by and come full circle for having this conversation again.”
Logan, who’s now the director of the City of Phoenix’s Equal Opportunity Department, said the time is now to address systemic issues he’s seen affect even his own family.
“If it’s gone from those three generations evidence of police brutality, when does it stop?” Logan said. “This isn’t about politics. This is about doing what’s right.”
He says conversation, real dialogue, that includes the community and law enforcement is where the country needs to start.
“How do we bring about change to where the incidents like we saw play out on television with George Floyd doesn’t happen again?” Logan said.
He believes it’s divisiveness that has to be overcome.
“We get caught up in our own value system our own cultural beliefs that we lose sight of what’s being said,” Logan said.
With eyes on the future, he’s hopeful that change at this moment in history can happen.
“It’s concerning that the change that the people are asking for has taken a long time but I am confident that change will come,” Logan said.