Disclaimer: This post is simply my opinion. I recognize that there are many ways to view this situation and that there are no right answers. I also recognize that no matter how hard I might try, I can never truly understand what it is like for the people and communities most impacted by this situation because I have not and likely cannot walk in their shoes. I am of course open to other viewpoints and /or counterarguments (for lack of a better term) so long as they are communicated in a respectful way.
To use the language once made popular by a cat on the internet…
I haz a sad.
I typically don’t post on controversial or political topics on my Facebook page and don’t think I have ever done so on my blog. But when something gnaws at me for as long as this has, at some point I need to express how I feel. I don’t watch the news all that much anymore. There is a great quote that says, “To feel everything so deeply is both a blessing and a curse”. I can attest to this. Sometimes just watching the news when there are so many tragic events occurring can evoke pretty strong feelings of grief. Believe me, in the work that I have done for the past 19 years, I have seen enough grief invoking tragedies, injustices, and people in pain to last me a lifetime.
Earlier this week when I happened to learn about the riots in Baltimore, my first reaction was sadness. My second, kneejerk reaction was confusion as to why people would turn to looting and burning things down. My third almost involuntary thought was that it’s ok for people to protest, but that they should “be peaceful”. This has been my reaction to these type of occurrences in the past. This time, however, the thought was followed by an unexpected feeling of discomfort. Knot in the pit of my stomach kind of discomfort. I have found that-much like ignoring pain- ignoring these feelings of discomfort doesn’t result in their disappearance. So I processed, I observed, I looked for information (including information which contradicted my own opinion) and I reflected. This is the conclusion I came to.
I absolutely still believe in peace and in love as a more powerful, productive force than hate or fear. I believe that things can be accomplished without the use of violence, as evidenced throughout history with visionary leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. I believe that when an individual or group resorts to the same tactics that they are protesting against, it decreases their credibility and effectiveness. I think damaging the very community that one is attempting to protest on behalf of is counterproductive. I do not condone violence as an effective method or approach.
BUT…
Telling people in this situation to “be peaceful”, is not helpful, not adequate, and may actually spur even greater feelings of despair and anger.
This may seem like a surprising statement from someone who is all about love and tends to be more of a peaceful pacifist, but for one moment I would ask you to set all of your thoughts, opinions and viewpoints on this topic aside. Set aside all of the “facts” you have read or seen on the news about the Freddie Gray case. Imagine, just for a moment, that your child/family member/friend/loved one was unjustly murdered. Worse yet, imagine that you had reason to believe that they were murdered by the very people that you are supposed to be able to trust to protect you and your loved ones. How would you feel? I am pretty sure I would be both devastated and enraged. I would hope that I would not resort to violence but not having ever been in that situation I cannot be certain that I wouldn’t.
Then imagine that prior to this tragedy, you:
• Have been watching similar situations play out across the nation (sometimes with the person responsible facing minor or no consequences),
• Live in a neighborhood where roughly one out of every four people lives in poverty and where it’s not at all uncommon for as many as 95% of elementary school students to qualify for free and reduced lunch programs and/or,
• Have experienced everything from lack of access to opportunities and resources to verbal attacks to physical violence based on something you can’t change or control
I would like to think that if even we can’t agree on how issues such as the deaths of Freddie Gray and others like him should be handled, we can at least agree that having to experience one-let alone all- of the factors above would likely spin even the best of us into a tornado of anger, grief, confusion, fear and possibly desperation. If someone told me to be peaceful when I was caught in the midst of all of those emotions, I highly doubt my response would be to smile, agree, and acquiesce. In my previous blog post I talked about the implications of not paying attention to our pain, how it can cause our personal demons to be born, and what it has to teach us. Collective pain acts in much the same way.
We further exacerbate the problem of violence as a response to injustice as a nation by on the one hand saying that violence is not the answer and on the other hand spending billions of dollars on building, growing, and/or sustaining our troops so that when a conflict arises and/or we feel that our rights or our country has been or may be threatened, we can successfully use force to resolve the issue if we feel it is necessary. Throughout this country’s history, there have been a number of times when we thought it was necessary. Please know that I have the utmost respect and admiration for those who serve our country and understand and appreciate the need as a country to have armed forces. But I can also understand how those who are not being heard and who are living in situations where they have seen that their rights and their lives can and have been threatened could interpret the mixed message of advocating non-violence while perpetuating military force as really meaning that violence is not the answer…unless you have power and resources.
We uphold Martin Luther King Jr. as the poster boy for peace when these issues arise, but we conveniently neglect, forget, or perhaps may not even know that he also understood why desperate individuals and communities lash out. For, as he stated, “… it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”
It’s an issue not only of race but also of the communities around the country where these incidents continue to happen. It is therefore an issue of socioeconomic status as well. Forget for a moment the age old argument about whether people in poverty are there because of their choices or because of inequitable and dysfunctional systems or both. We all start out innocent. A child does not have the power to make choices that dictate where and how they will live. You cannot tell me that a child growing up in a low-income neighborhood starts out on equal footing with that of a child growing up in a wealthy or even middle class neighborhood and thus should have his or her accomplishments and worth evaluated in the same manner.
Everything I have, I have in part because I have worked my ass off for it. But without access to opportunities, resources, and a support system of caring adults who had the skills and ability to help me succeed, it is very likely that I wouldn’t even have had a shot at being given a chance to work for my accomplishments in the first place. Those of you who know me know that I feel love is the most powerful force in the universe and I detest seeing any person hurt another (physically, economically, or emotionally). I am all about the love. Yet I also see now that if you are going to tell people to utilize peaceful mechanisms for impacting change, you also have a moral obligation to help them find, access, and use effective tools for doing so.
By them, I don’t just mean minorities or those in poverty. I also mean police officers. We need tools to ensure that those who are not a good fit for law enforcement do not become or remain police officers. We need tools and mechanisms to ensure that those police officers who may be suffering from PTSD and thus may be making decisions that do not align with what they have been called upon to do can get help without it impacting their careers. We need tools so that those police officers who are upholding the meaning of “serve and protect” and who are doing AMAZING things to help others (and there are quite a few of them, despite what some would have you believe) can get the support they need to continue on this path and to build and maintain trust with their often diverse communities.
As sad as it has made me to watch what has been happening, I am heartened by the people who have banded together to protect their community and to utilize non-violent methods of protest. I am astonished and pleased that gangs in the communities affected have put aside their differences if even temporarily to serve their community in positive ways. I am given hope by the fact that those in power seem to be taking this seriously and have charged all six police officers involved in Freddie Gray’s death. (Though, sadly, a small part of me cynically wonders if this would have been the case if the riots had not occurred and garnered national attention). I am encouraged that we as a nation are having a dialogue about the inequities that still exist in this country. I am inspired by the many friends who may have a variety of divergent viewpoints but the one thing they all seem to have in common is a deep concern for the issues these events have brought to light.
I want peace AND I want to understand. I want peace to be used not to silence and ignore but to be wielded as a powerful tool once the feelings, thoughts, and viewpoints of those most impacted by these types of incidents have been truly heard and considered (preferably in a healthy, non-destructive manner). I want us as a country to acknowledge that these issues exist and to start having open conversations about them. I realize that these types of conversations can be incredibly uncomfortable for many of us (myself included), but I am willing to bet that they are a hell of a lot more comfortable than watching communities burn and lives being lost. I want not only peace, but what we as a country have said is one of our founding principles and our foundation –liberty and justice for all. Sadly we are not there yet. Until we are willing to do the messy and uncomfortable work of acknowledging the problems that exist, liberty and justice for all is merely an ideal and a dream. So long as that is the case, the best we can likely hope for are pockets of improvement and a panacea of silence to create the illusion that we have contained a powder keg…until it explodes again.