REMOVING WALLS THAT BLOCK TRUST
Corpus Christi’s Terry Mills brings youth, police to summit for frank talk
Each week, this series will introduce you to an exceptional American who unites, rather than divides, our communities. To read more about the American profiled here and more average Americans doing exceptional things, visit onenation.usatoday.com.
What does it mean to you to be an American?
I love America. America to me means ... when Miss Liberty said ‘bring me your tired, bring me your this, bring me your that. That’s the America I know. I realize that we’re different. And that people see America different. But you know what? I’d rather live in America than live in some Third World country, because you don’t have the freedom to vote. You don’t have the freedom to do this, to do that. And here in America, we have that. We sometimes take it for granted. But we have that right, under the Constitution, to voice that opinion, whether its verbally, on paper, protesting. That’s America.
What moment touched and motivated you to launch this effort?
“I got tired of minority kids getting pulled over by cops. Or if you get pulled over and you don’t do what they say or you say the wrong thing, you might get beat up to death. Or you might get shot. That doesn’t happen in Corpus Christi. That happens in other places. But I got tired of seeing that throughout the United States. I just said we need to come together as one.
What gives you hope?
What gives me hope ... is that I know that one day that, in my eyes, all this hatred that’s going on — all the dissatisfaction, all the killing, all the rape and all that stuff — in my America, that’s all going to be gone. And we can all get along. Not just get along to get along, but to get along and mean it.
What do you hope to accomplish through your efforts?
We sometimes need to change the way we perceive things. People don’t realize that just by talking to someone ... by giving you words of encouragement, you can change a person’s paradigm. You can change a person’s whole way of thinking.