I feel that it's somehow incumbent on me—on each of us—to say something about the events in Ferguson. That not speaking is accepting. That silence is death. And yet, I have nothing to say.
My Perfect Non-Reader, who doesn't follow the news much, found herself confused this morning about which incident this was. Was it the one with the kid and the toy gun, or the one with the hoodie and the Skittles? This is the world we live in.
The world we want to live in is very different from that. The world where young black men aren't shot to death with such frequency that we confuse one for another. The world where police rarely feel themselves at such risk that they kill to protect themselves against citizens. The world where no neighborhoods see the police as an occupying army. The world where our courts are trusted, our prosecutors trustworthy, our governments governable, and the citizenry see options other than fire.
Is there a path between this world we live in and the one we want? I have to believe that there is.
But when I say I have to believe, I am implying, I know, that my belief in that path, like my belief in the Divine Creator, is not based on evidence, but on my own need. Or perhaps it's just that like a mathematical proof, the existence of such a path does not mean that it's possible at this time to find it, or even know what steps from here follow the path or stray from it.
I find it hard to believe that indicting Darren Wilson would have been a step on the path from where we are to where we want to be. Darren Wilson didn't create the world we live in, and when he shot and killed Michael Brown, he was playing his part in that world. Following his training, responding to the circumstances, protecting himself against what, in his experience, was a real threat. Individual responsibility seems like it must be part of the path to justice, but at the same time, isn't there a danger that Officer Wilson would be used as a scapegoat, and his prosecution as yet another reason not to address the underlying problems? And all the awful behavior of the police in Ferguson and the county, from leaving the corpse on the ground to the horrific standoffs of militarized police with the incensed residents, the official lies and misrepresentations, the effortful miscommunication that exacerbated the pain and anger—none of the things that happened after the bullets should make Mr. Wilson any more or less guilty. And if minimizing the death of Michael Brown (or any human death) would be horrible and inhuman, heaping the problems of the world on the man who killed him doesn't get us along the path toward the world we want.
What moves us along that path? What steps are the right steps?
I believe that the longest marches happen because everybody just takes one step after another. That's one of my firmest and most cherished beliefs about the world: everybody just taking one step after another eventually moves the whole world. I am at a loss, right now, to know what steps to take.
My Latin tag—Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus—is one of those jokes that is not a joke. Deal we shall, for deal we must; it's not a choice. We live in the world we find ourselves in. We have to take steps; we have to do what we think is right; we have to hope that it moves us toward justice.
I don't have anything to say about the events in Ferguson. But silence isn't right, either.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
I started with a long comment on what I wanted to believe and what moved me on the path.
I erased it because I’m holding on to one idea right now:
We want to run our march–because the thought of losing another child to militarized police who fear out of ignorance and isolation is too horrible. We want to run because each step feels too slow, too paralyzed with inaction. But I don’t know how to run. I don’t know how to make this right. I can only take my baby steps–to petition for more community involvement and community policing, for better representation and better sensitivity training, to vote against lawmakers who won’t support demilitarizing the police and stronger gun control, to tell my fellow beings that I would like to better understand them and to try to understand my own mistakes so that I can make them feel more included and safer in our communities.
I was thinking about this earlier this evening. I want to come up with a Ferguson Pledge, and I want every single politician who runs for office in the next two years (hell, ten years, but let’s start small) to be obligated to say it, and then to do it, and for anyone who won’t to be considered a joke candidate.
I’m not sure what the Ferguson Pledge should be. Some things (three?) that you promise to do if elected. Concrete things, changes that will help prevent any more children from being shot by the police. Demilitarize the police — my town isn’t threatened by anything today that it wasn’t threatened by thirty years ago, any military equipment we’ve acquired in that timeframe is at least unnecessary and more like actively dangerous, and we’ll sell or destroy or turn into public art every single piece of it, within a year. Deal with non-violent protests by pulling ten arbitrarily-selected protesters out of the crowd, spending at least two hours talking to them over a gourmet meal, and then giving them a PA system to speak to the rest of the protesters and explain what I’m going to do to address their concerns. Direct every precinct in my town that when there aren’t any protests, they will hold a weekly meeting with community members and police leadership to talk about their concerns. (Treat it like jury duty, except that once a year you get invited to a gourmet breakfast with the Chief Of Police to tell them what they’re doing wrong.)
I’m makin’ shit up, but I bet there are some concrete steps that could be written down. And I don’t know how to get them to do it, but *every single fucking politician who runs for any kind of office* needs to be badgered *relentlessly* by the media until they agree that they’re going to do what it takes to prevent kids from getting shot by cops.
Fneh.
Hey, Nashville sort of did some of this. (Engaging with the community rather than treating them as The Enemy, anyway.) http://benswann.com/nashville-police-chief-refuses-to-crack-down-on-ferguson-protesters-no-violence-or-property-damage-ensues/