Standing My Ground Quotes

“Woodard was riding at the back of a Greyhound bus, because that is where Black people traveling through the South sat in 1946, no matter what they had done for their country. He proudly wore his green army uniform. Three stripes on each arm showed his rank. He had four medals pinned on his chest. There was a Good Conduct Medal, an American Campaign Medal, a World War II Victory Medal, and a battle star Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal. He was awarded the last one for bravery. When the bus arrived at a rest stop in a South Carolina town now known as Batesburg-Leesville, Police Chief Lynwood Shull and his officers dragged Woodard off the bus. The bus driver hadn’t liked the way Woodard asked to use the restroom fifty-four miles back, outside of Augusta. So, when the bus got to the town, the driver called the police, even though he and Woodard hadn’t shared two words since that stop. The police demanded to see Woodard’s discharge papers. Then the cops forced him into an alley, where they beat him savagely. For good measure, the police chief used his baton to gouge Woodard’s eye sockets until both eyeballs ruptured beyond repair. Woodard was blind from that day forward. He was twenty-seven. And remember, all this happened while he was wearing the very uniform that identified his service to his country”
― Harry Dunn, Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer's Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble After January 6th

“couldn’t understand it—I still don’t. It angered me that loyalty to a single individual could overwhelm otherwise decent people—people who had fallen into the darkness and forgotten their oaths of office.”
― Harry Dunn, Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer's Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble After January 6th

“One fellow officer said a group that had gotten inside the Capitol told him, “Put your gun down, and we’ll show you what kind of nigger you really are!” The irony of that moment was that more than seventy years after Sergeant Isaac Woodard—after the civil rights movement; after the deaths of Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, and others; after the Supreme Court declared segregation unconstitutional; after Black people’s continued service in every war; and after the election of an African American as president of the United States—we were just “niggers” to them, just like that Black veteran of World War II who had come home from war only to be beaten and blinded by white cops.”
― Harry Dunn, Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer's Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble After January 6th

“Woodard was riding at the back of a Greyhound bus, because that is where Black people traveling through the South sat in 1946, no matter what they had done for their country. He proudly wore his green army uniform. Three stripes on each arm showed his rank. He had four medals pinned on his chest. There was a Good Conduct Medal, an American Campaign Medal, a World War II Victory Medal, and a battle star Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal. He was awarded the last one for bravery.”
― Harry Dunn, Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer's Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble After January 6th

“People love options. People want to know what they can do, not what they can’t do.”
― Harry Dunn, Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer's Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble After January 6th

“Police and firefighters always had unions, and they negotiated great retirement packages. You do your twenty or thirty years and you can retire relatively young with a great income for the rest of your life,”
― Harry Dunn, Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer's Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble After January 6th

“Criminals are the handful of Americans who have made a conscious decision that preying on other people will be their profession, their way of life. No, they don’t want a job. They don’t want to start a legitimate business. They have decided to abuse other people to get rich. I’m talking about everybody from serious drug traffickers and professional robbers to people like Bernie Madoff, who stole billions from hardworking Americans in a Ponzi scheme, to the people who ripped off billions in taxpayer money from Paycheck Protection Plan loans during the pandemic.”
― Harry Dunn, Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer's Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble After January 6th

“Isaac Woodard.”
― Harry Dunn, Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer's Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble After January 6th

“One woman in a pink MAGA shirt yelled, “You hear that, guys? This nigger voted for Joe Biden!” Then the whole crowd, I’m guessing there were about twenty of them, joined in, screaming, “Boo! Fucking nigger!” No one had ever—ever—called me a nigger while I was wearing the uniform of a Capitol Police officer. I was stunned for a moment, but I didn’t dwell on it. I couldn’t.”
― Harry Dunn, Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer's Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble After January 6th