Reason for hope

Bella doesn’t know what’s happening in Baltimore. Baltimore is 2,800 miles from us, and she is four. She doesn’t yet know that in this country she is a “brown” child. She doesn’t yet know what it means that her other grandparents are proud to call themselves braceros--people who came north from Mexico to work with their arms and backs in the fields of California and Arizona. She doesn’t yet know what racism is, though it is in the air she breathes. I hope that what is happening right now in Baltimore will affect the course of her life for the better. 

Twenty-three years ago, police beat Rodney King nearly to death. In the intervening years, there have been countless beatings and deaths of unarmed black and brown people in America at the hands of armed police. Some police are kind and good; some serve bravely and deserve our admiration. But some abuse their power. When abuse happens, a racist system defends the abusers, and the abuse happens again and again. A few days ago, another black child was stopped by the police and thrown into a vehicle, and when he came out of that vehicle his spine was broken and he died. 

Ten thousand people filled the streets of Baltimore to say enough. Meditators sat in a public street in Baltimore to say enough. Clergy marched and knelt with members of organized gangs in Baltimore to say enough. Black people are on the front lines, black people whose lives, and whose children's lives, are at risk. But it's not only black people saying enough. People of all skin colors, all ethnicities, and all classes say enough.

In a state of rage and frustration, a couple of hundred young people in Baltimore set cars on fire, broke glass windows, stole shoes and clothing, and threw rocks at police. This behavior got the attention of the media. But what got my attention was the concern of so many people that “business as usual” had to stop. Masses of people said this is unacceptable. Stop it. Now. What I hear is the power in Baltimore: the power of outrage, the power of justice, the power of people of all colors, saying stop this.  

Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. said that a riot is the language of the unheard. A blogger I follow found the video of one of Martin Luther King’s most famous speeches and posted it here.  If you are in too great a hurry to listen to a forty-seven minute speech, I can quote a few bits of it for you, but you will lose the rhythm, the cadence, the emphasis, and the mesmerizing beauty of King’s oratory if you only read the words on the screen. If you can, hear him, and enjoy the beautiful tones of the black and white film as you hear him. 

“Many in moments of anger, many in moments of deep bitterness, engage in riots. I have always said, and I will continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating.... But it is necessary for me to be as vigorous in condemning the conditions which cause persons to feel that they must engage in riotous activities as it is for me to condemn riots.... Riots do not develop out of thin air.... In the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. 

“Our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delays. As long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention. 

“We have the power to end poverty, if we have the will to do it. 

“I still have faith in the future and I still believe that these problems can be solved.... I refuse to despair.”
--Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967.