One of the things that's been most troubling for me about all of this (and not just "this," but all of the similar controversies over time) is what it says about our underlying assumptions of law and justice. I know I've written about it before, but it boggles the mind that people (and its almost all people) so completely equate the two, law and justice.
It seems that everyone (or almost everyone) works on the assumption that the laws themselves are bedrock. If things don't work out, it's not the fault of the law, but something gone wrong in carrying out the law. We seem to think the law is inherently justice and only its enforcement can be corrupt.
Sure, there are unjust laws, but those are big things, which are ferreted out by society. Things like that don't sneak up on people; they're not spurned by individual incidents or specific situations. When laws are the problem, we fight wars. When execution of the laws are wrong, that's when we riot. We read into the judgment or law with out own biases. A black man can't get a fair shake with all these corrupt cops out there. These cops risk their lives to do their job - it's not always pretty, but somebody's got to do it.
These attitudes don't help anyone, they run headlong into each other, often in violent ways, but they're ultimately rooted in the same problem. Laws are not the bedrock for society. They may be the bones upon which society rests, but there is something deeper, some ethereal morality that governs how we live and interact with each other. Laws try to approximate it in technical ways; religions approach it with mystic vagueries (and sometimes laws of their own), but we all sort of know there is a right and wrong out there, even if we can't always touch it.
So we do have to have laws. We have to have some concrete way of putting into practice that thing out there we can't fully explain. WE must have laws, but we must also recognize them for what they are: approximations of morality, not the definition of it.
I've talked about this analogy a lot, for a lot of things, but our justice machine seems to be putting out faulty products. Whatever society we've constructed from the laws we have is producing results that look like Ferguson. Now the results most people get most of the time are within the bounds of acceptability, so we avoid blaming the machine itself. We attempt to tweak the results, manipulate them a little, throw away the truly unsalvageable, make the product workable for more people. We're focused on changing the results.
You may be able to patch something workable together that way, but it can't last. You've still got a broken machine. Unless and until we're willing to admit, really admit, that it's the machine that's the problem, not the outcomes, we're going to keep having the same results. We're patching together a broken machine and with each passing year it takes more effort to make the results look like we want them to look. Eventually the whole thing's gonna fall apart.
I have no doubt the grand jury in Ferguson studied the evidence, deliberated in good faith, and honestly followed the instructions given them to the letter of the law. There's some debate over just how robust the prosecution was in presenting a case, but ultimately the system seems to have worked as it was intended to work.
Of course, if this is true, then the system's got to change - not just to amend the result into something we'd like better, that's a fools errand, but wholesale reform, redesign, re-engineering the way these laws and customs work so that everyone, police and protester alike, can be happy with the result.
I recognize we've been sold the notion this kind of result is an impossible pipe dream simply because it's never happened before. To that I'd say, things have, generally, always gotten better over time. While I have hope in the promise of unity, even those skeptics have to believe there's a possibility for improvement (at least as much as they believe it won't happen).
GM makes a lot of cars. For a while there, they knew the cars were coming off the line faulty, but they were content to fix them after the fact. Only now are they having to go back and fix the whole production process. It's not enough to just fix the results, we have to go back and fix the machine that produces the results we don't like.
Even if most of the people like their results, when some don't, we can always work to make things better. Constantly improving, not settling for pretty good - at least not when it comes to human lives. That's not to say everyone must end up equal, but there is some baseline for sufficiency in society - when people fall below it endemically, the machine has to be rethought.
If the result of these events in Ferguson is status quo, we're not going to make it. Even if this one event blows over, the compound effects will eventually catch up to us. The outrage testifies to the fact something is wrong. The Grand Jury has shown it's not the police officer himself, perhaps it's his training or the culture and influences that shape it. That's the next step. Riots, at this point, can be debilitating if they're too overtly focused on the results and not the machine. The message has been sent; now the hard work of moving forward must begin.
[Edited 12-3-2014 to add] This was posted yesterday. Today a grand jury in New York decided not to prosecute a police office for choking Eric Garner (who died of a related heart attack) over suspected illegal cigarette sales. The incident was captured on video. The office in question was already facing charges of abuse in previous incidents and any number of policy and procedure violations were admitted to by both police officials and medical responders. It's an almost entirely different situation from Michael Brown, but it turns out to be very much the same. The machine is broken.
Looting isn't stupid. It's hopeless, but it's not stupid.
I'm not saying that the young men and women breaking into liquor stores and fast food restaurants and stealing shoes from the corner store are actively exhibiting anything other than an opportunistic gut reaction. What I am saying is that whether they know it or not, looting is the collective response of the truly hopeless. It's not stupid.
I don't condone violence of any kind. I don't want people rioting or looting for any reason. Then again, I have hope. My faith is built around a belief that love will win in the end, that we're, despite all evidence to the contrary, destined for a future of peace and loving co-existence in which all are welcomed, valued, and find place.
I imagine most of those who casually dismiss looting as stupid are also not hopeless. Even if your hope is somewhat less idealistic than mine, you believe there is a good chance things can or will be at least functional for most people in the future. "If only people would just _________ or understand ____________ or even elect ____________, we'd figure this out. That's hope.
People with hope don't understand looting.
Looting isn't stupid; it's just hopeless.* In the wake of extreme tragedy, disaster - a zombie apocalypse for example - there will be looting. Those who've prepped for doomsday will find these looters reactionary and callous, with their underground bunkers and decades worth of canned hope shading their eyes. But when there's reasonable expectation the world will operate differently in the future, old rules can more easily be ignored. If the aliens have landed, and are actively disintegrating every human in sight, if the flood waters have covered the roofs and armed police are forcing you back into the danger zone, there is little in your adrenaline-drenched body to believe anything will be as it was. Survival is the new morality.
We can say, rightly (at least from the majority perspective, those with hope), a decision like that of the Grand Jury in Michael Brown's death, whether we agree with its faithfulness to the law or not, is no apocalyptic disaster. That's true. It's a tragedy from any perspective, but life will go on.
Looting, in this case, is not about a hopelessness for the existence of society, but a hopelessness that right or wrong mean anything within that society for people of a certain color or socioeconomic status. Again, I don't condone looting and violence. I just can't. I have faith. But it makes perfect sense to me how a lot of young black men and women wouldn't. It makes sense to me that they look at all the events of Ferguson and say, "It doesn't matter if I do the right thing or the wrong thing, I'm still gonna end up dead or imprisoned or beaten or gassed." They do have numbers on their side. In lots of poor black neighborhoods it's more likely for young men to serve time than to graduate from high school - and a high school diploma is no guarantee of success in its own right, especially from the kind of schools our society provides for those neighborhoods.
Looting isn't stupid, but our responses to it are. We crave news coverage that shows the violence and not coverage in the dozens of churches offering shelter, food, clothes, and hope to people who might otherwise be hopeless. We tell the angry, young hopeless people to stop being stupid, rather than providing some indication there is a future worth hoping for - a future in which all perspectives are considered and included, even if they make it difficult for the comfortable, established way of life a few of us enjoy.
The answer to violence is certainly not more violence. It's a message we hope to send to looters, but one that doesn't come across well behind riot gear and tear gas. That might be practically effective, but it's ultimately useless. We're not fighting stupidity, we're fighting hopelessness. We need new weapons. Not the weapons that come at a discount to our police from the Iraqi surplus store, but those which come from personal commitment to cross boundaries in our daily lives (and not for a day or a week or an hour at a time, either).
These tragic and regrettable barriers mean few persons of legal authority carry any weight for the hopeless, believing they do only reinforces and strengthens the lack of hope. We need to listen to those champions of hope who hope so strongly they've built lives and relationships of trust among the hopeless. We need to listen, rather than arrest them; it only breeds the very hopelessness we wish to end.
It starts with recognizing that my normal, my life, my hope, my assumptions - my truth - does not work for everyone in every place. My stuff matters, but not because it's right, because it's mine. The same courtesy is owed to others, even if they seem wrong or stupid, even dangerous. I can make this claim, because I am willing to sacrifice if need be, for a future in which we all not only have a place, but feel we belong on equal ground. I certainly have not sacrificed enough,** but I believe such sacrifice is possible, because I believe in hope.
*It doesn't quite make sense in the context of this post, but there is also a looting for seemingly no reason at all, or very little reason. White teenagers celebrating a football victory (or mourning a loss), for example. I'd argue that this is still rooted in hopelessness, but a hopelessness that has no outlet in a society in which these people are already atop the mountain of privilege.
**I have to acknowledge that my hope is easier to have, because the world around me works pretty well for me, especially as compared to the vast majority of people on the planet. I also have to recognize my willingness to sacrifice for hope might be compromised when the reality of a more difficult hope sets in. We can't underestimate the power of comfort and status quo. It's much easier to change someone else than to change myself.
I don't know if that story is true, half true, or completely made up. I wasn't there and, thankfully, since I don't have cable, I've not been inundated with every last detail and opinion on the matter.
I do find the story immanently believable though, because it so fits with the kind of thing I've seen over and over again.
I know a few police officers. I met and spoken with many on various occasions, almost always off-duty. They seems like normal, committed, sensible people. When I've encountered police officers "in the real world," however, it's almost always been a negative experience. My experience with cops has been of the power-trip, hair-trigger temper, angry for no reason variety. Perhaps it's the company I keep?
I've been screamed at by police officers for having a conversation with a homeless man. I've seen teenagers thrown up against cars for little more than being black. I've seen the intimidation first hand.
I won't go so far as to say these particular police officers are normative or even numerous - but they exist. I've heard plenty of cops talk about co-workers who are jerks or take the job too seriously. I imagine the police officers who are calm and committed to upstanding service simply avoid the kind of activities that give their profession a bad name.
The problem comes, though, when a particular class of people - namely the urban (largely black) poor - have only experiences with the worst examples of policing. When you only know angry, power-tripping cops (or the nameless, faceless others who frequently patrol your neighborhood), it's difficult to get a sense of justice and fair play.
Someone asked me the other day what the point of looting was. I don't condone it and, deep down, its simply a way of getting stuff for free. But, when your perception of the world is, "it doesn't matter if I follow the rules or not, the Man is coming for me," there's little motivation to actually follow the rules. It's a silly, wasteful type of protest - one that almost always misses the mark - but it is protest nonetheless.
I was raised in middle-class white society. I was one of those kids taught that the police are your friends and they'll always help you out of a jam. I was taught that I have nothing to fear if I've done nothing wrong and I have the right to stand up for myself.
As an adult, having spent time in places where police presence is something other than inconspicuous, I have trouble believing, deep-down, that those lessons are true. I certainly know a lot of people who grow up being taught to avoid the police at all costs; if you find yourself in an unfamiliar place - don't go to the cops, they'll blame the nearest crime on you; even if you've done nothing wrong, being black is often enough to get you hauled downtown.
These are, of course, anything but absolute truths. However, they are reality for a lot of people. Unfortunately, those people are disproportionately black. Black people do not have the best history of relations with law and justice in this country. While great strides have been made over the years to raise the ceiling of opportunity for African-Americans (at least one can be elected President), this incident (and many others) illustrate that the floor of treatment remains solidly in the basement. Scenes from Ferguson this week (outside of modern riot gear and armored vehicles) could be mistaken for the Deep South in 1962.
When I've been party or witness to police over-stepping bounds, I've spoken up, talked back. I've done so with almost no fear of reprisal. I recognize the angry guy I'm speaking with is armed, but I'm fairly confident he won't do anything to me. I'm right and I'm white. That's just not the truth for everyone.
To me, though, the real failure in all of this is the response. It's the position of leadership. Sadly, there are innocent people killed every day in this country - more often than we'd like, they're killed by police officers. In most cases, there is an investigation, consequences, results. It's only those few times when action is avoided or delayed or ignored, that it becomes news.
Human nature is towards defensiveness. That's natural. But we have the ability to recognize our nature and override it; it's literally what separates us from the animals (except maybe whales and dolphins - those guys are smart!). Problems arise when people given power refuse to accept accountability. Police officers command public trust - therefore they must be willing to submit to a higher, more invasive, possibly unfair level of suspicion. It just comes with the territory. People in power just have a higher standard, whether we like it or not.
It gets tricky for police, because they're also the ones charged with upholding those standards - essentially, they're policing themselves. A quick, defensive response (whether its correct or not) just doesn't communicate the kind of accountability required of those charged with upholding the law.
My wife is a teacher; it's the world in which our family lives. It's painful to see that those people who most probably deserve to be in a different position are the ones most strenuously defended by teachers' unions. It's like police policing themselves. Too often these units become exclusive clubs, designed to benefit lifetime members, rather than defenders of their own profession.
I recognize the value of brotherhood and family and unconditional support, especially in an occupation so fraught with danger. I get what that's pushed so strenuously. At the same time, police officers must know that for every bad decision that gets defended, every mediocre cop who keeps their job after a screw up, the reputation of the whole profession takes a hit.
With cops, like with teachers (or really any profession) if they themselves are not the ones upholding the standard, the standard is not long for this world.
Positions of power attract abuse of power. I'm not simply talking about how people with power issues are attracted to positions of power (which is true), but that the positions themselves breed abuse of power when lacking accountability.
You can go back to the oft-cited Stanford study - where a group of undergraduates was split into prisoners and guards and left alone. With 24 hours, those with power had descended into dehumanizing acts of violence and torture against classmates who had been their equals not a day before.
I have great sympathy for the cop who says, "I'm gonna tell these kids to get out of the street, because I can and they have to listen." I've been in similar positions of authority that have similarly gone to my head. It happens without conscious awareness. Power just takes over.
When those who are supposed to listen and obey don't, well then, it's a short step to increased pressure, force, and violence. It's not an outrageous leap to make - especially for those who've been trained to respond that way - especially when you know deep down there's no way anyone with any power will accept the word of a poor, black teenager over that of a cop.
The Ferguson Police Department has proven to be anything, but a bastion of calm, considered, response - or even really community awareness. The whole week has been a lesson in how to do PR poorly. Whether you think the office is telling the truth or not, they've bungled everything that came after.
It's no real stretch to think perhaps the atmosphere and subconscious training could have lead to a lack of awareness, judgment or discipline. When we make it easy to abuse power, we can't be surprised when it happens. It doesn't have to be malicious to be evil. We haven't heard from the office in question - while its entirely possible he's as resolute and unfeeling as his department seems to be, my guess is he's as broken up about the whole thing as anyone. My indefensible bouts of anger have never resulted in consequences quite so dire, but they just continue to devastate my soul. I can't imagine what Darren Wilson's life is like right now.
Then again, despite all the furor and anger, these kids could be cunning con artists. They could have concocted the story knowing that public opinion would be on the side of unarmed minorities over the big, bad white cop. I doubt it, but I'm not ruling it out. Lord knows I've witnessed some terribly disrespectful behavior from arrogant teenagers in my neighborhood and thought they could really use someone to shake them up a bit.
I doubt the reality of this situation is comfortable to anyone, no matter what angle your experience and bias leads you to believe.
But even if this incident isn't everything most people think it to be, it looks enough like other, real, verifiable abuses of power (disproportionately correlated with race), that it can be representative of the larger problem.
We have a race problem in this country, but we also have a real issue with power and accountability. We (and by that I mean just about every organized group - from Catholic bishops to drug-running street gangs) have an affinity for "looking out for our own." We tend to rally around our own - both when they deserve it and when they deserve the strong corrective force only "we" can give.
Ultimately, none of these issue will be solved until we come to one profound realization: there is no "them;" there is only us. We are all in this together.
I follow that crazy radical Jesus Christ (or, at least, I attempt to), and one of the most profound lessons I've tried to learn from him is that our place is always on the side of the outcast the minority, the downtrodden, the forgotten. I try (and I think I do a better job than most of my friends and acquaintances would like me to do), whenever a "them" emerges (from molesters, to immigrants, to teenage "thugs"), to put myself on their side, in their shoes.
I do this in part to remind myself and others that we're all human; any division we create is arbitrary at best, but also because it's only from inside the "us" that any real change can occur. No one is taking heed of "them" telling me what to do. No one is changing their life because "they" told me to do it. Change comes when we stand up to ourselves and call ourselves to something better.
If there is going to be a "them," whoever it is, count me among them. That's where I'll make my stand, because that's where, time and again, I find my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And when this particular "them" becomes strong enough and powerful enough to become an "us," I'll cross over again.
The only "us" that matters is the "us" of all humanity. Only when we recognize that we're responsible both for and to each other - when there is nothing fruitful to be gained from creating a "them," can we really begin to address the problems that plague us.
Playing "us" and "them" games is all about power. A wise man I know once said, "the only legitimate use of power is to share it," or give it away. That's called accountability - a recognition that we all (every one of us) have a part to play. No one can or should do more than their share. We're all in this together. There is no "them," only us.
