Protest about inequality is as American as it gets. As I once heard my man Bruce say, “No one is free unless everyone is free.” I’m sure he was paraphrasing someone else, but it has always stuck with me.
As a kid, the Fourth of July meant fireworks and red-white-and-blue and birthday cake for my sister; now that I’m an adult, the meaning is less simple for me, and I can see that things are still not in balance. It’s hard not to be aware of the way persons of color are treated, especially when the families of so many of them started out with their hands tied behind their backs. As a child, I had little idea of that sort of inequity, but my eyes are opened now: if I don’t speak out about it, I feel at least partially responsible. And so I must speak out.
Some will suggest it’s because I don’t love my country, but I think that the United States of America is STILL the greatest nation on the face of the earth; blind following of jingoistic slogans or beliefs leads us nowhere, however, and worse, threatens to take us toward a greater confrontation if we refuse to acknowledge that there are serious problems that we can’t even discuss, let alone do something about. We have forgotten that we have more common ties to the folks on the other side of the aisle than we have differences, and we have stopped listening to one another.
Listening is a choice. A refusal to listen isn’t caused by the media; it’s not brought about by political discourse; a refusal to listen occurs because we choose not to listen, and we probably refuse because we simply have always believed what we believe, never listening to another point of view which might challenge our own. That’s fine if we’re absolutely right, as in “all men are created equal”; if some men (and women), however, don’t feel that they are treated equally, we should at least be willing to listen to their grievances. We have chosen not to, and now there is no middle ground. In a democracy, all voices are needed, and now every day we choose not to listen to many of those voices. We raise our voices instead of improving our argument, and we slander our friends with name-calling in public forums because we don’t agree with their statements.
Who have we become?
I’m the son of a cop, and I believe he was a good cop, like most of them. There are some bad ones, though, and we have to start acknowledging that at some point; blind support is not going to solve the conflicts that now arise daily. Police officers lay their lives on the line every day, but that doesn’t mean we stand by when they brutalize people, whether they’re guilty or not. Police—like clergy—should be above reproach, and they should be jettisoned from the ranks if they are not. It’s a hard job—‘thankless,’ as my father called it—and we must support them, more so if they are feeling under assault. Turning a blind eye to the lawlessness of anyone solves nothing, and is not the America in which I was raised. We FIGHT fascists in this country, don’t we? Protesters aren’t fascist—they’re American; when they start breaking the law, we prosecute them using our laws to do so, be they white, black, or purple. We don’t break laws in prosecuting them or we ourselves become lawless, by definition.
It’s a hard time. We seem to go through something like this every 30 years—it’s a cycle. The only way to break a cycle is to do something differently, to change. Protesting wrongdoing is an attempt to break that cycle. If you are truly American, if you truly want to make America great, then MAKE it great: embrace this opportunity to bind us together. Recognize that we are all in this together. We have two ears and one mouth for a reason, and we should listen more than we speak. The strength of America has always been in Americans—all of us.
Listen.
