We Can Do It

The 2024 Wharf to Wharf 10K race had started and our group number finally was able to move. As we got closer to the Beach Boardwalk arcade building, I noticed two police officers on the roof. One of them had what looked like a high-powered sniper rifle (never in America; now in America). Both were scanning the diverse 16,000 participants from the Santa Cruz area and beyond, serious racers to friends and family enjoying this annual community event, all of whom would run and walk from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk to the Capitola Wharf. My wife Amy and I, and many others, saw the rifle clearly on its stand right above the roofline.

I scanned the roof of the restaurants across the street from the arcade, and there were two more officers, one with another sniper rifle on its stand. After all the Wharf to Wharf's we've done over the years, I don't remember ever seeing officers on the roofs above us. They might've been there and I just never looked up, but I don't think so. I mean, every year there is plenty of police presence along the over six miles of race route to ensure safety since we're walking and running along city streets. But it felt different this year. 

If there were other snipers along the race route, we didn't see them, and frankly, didn't want to see them. This was a depressing sign of the times, where the threat of potentially random violence feels like it's everywhere, even though violent crime is actually down. We live in a moderate-to-liberal community ideologically and politically, but there are still vocal extremes everywhere. 

So, whether or not local law enforcement had received threats to the race, we may never know, but it was unsettling nonetheless. The ideological and political extremists today thrive on divisiveness and hate that threatens to crater the middle of the road for us all. In fact, fringe violence has left more and more pot holes of fear faster than we can fill them, but fill them we must. What compounds this is that too many of us are too quick to fuel the fear and hate when we judge and tear each other down for being different, and when we don't see eye to eye on issues that affect us all. In front of our own children, God, and everyone. We revel in it, actually. Amy and I have been guilty of that ourselves, and our children called us out on it every time. 

Amy and I finished the race without incident and headed home, exhausted but exhilarated that we finished another Wharf to Wharf. Throughout the race I kept thinking about the police snipers keeping watch, and the majority of us walking and running in the race in the middle of the road, celebrating community and enjoying the live bands playing along the route. The race promotes the health and fitness of the youth of Santa Cruz (our schools). For those physically able to participate, it's also all about the joy of feeling alive and active, a vibrant mindfulness of empathy and love for oneself, and for the thousands of others across generations with a variety of backgrounds and beliefs. And along the entire route, locals cheered us on with "you can do it" signs.

That's a more relevant theme that extends beyond this fun annual race. Our family, and I'd argue the majority of families in communities big and small across ideologies, do not want to live in fear and loathing, or continue to enable the hateful disabling rhetoric, and will do everything we can to be stable, safe, and thrive. And to empower our children to do the same. 

We can do it. And we will do it. We have to do it. Our children are counting on us.