Many people reacted with shock and horror when citizens in Ferguson, Missouri rioted following the grand jurys refusal to indict Officer Darren Wilson for murder. Our president, our clergy, our leaders and neighbors all called for peace and for those people to put their anger aside. I am not a violent person and I do not condone it. I have high respect for leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. Martin Luther King, Jr. led sit ins and peaceful marches to oppose segregation. Nelson Mandela fought the evils of apartheid from prison and urged his followers not to resort to violence. Mahatma Gandhi brought the powerful British Empire to its knees without firing a shot. But we live in a society where violence, oppression, hatred and anger fester. Not all of us have the courage and desire to follow a Gandhi or Mandela. We are humans, not saints. Instead of condemning the rioters and calling for peace from our comfortable, privileged positions, let us try and understand the violence and the rage. People find themselves shoved violently into a corner by hatred and oppression. People are demonized and dehumanized by those in power. People are spat on, shot at, beaten down and exploited by those in dominant positions. In Palestine, the people were fed up living under military occupation, having their homes demolished, going through humiliating searches and checkpoints every day. They fought back violently in the Intifada of 1988. In 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn in New York City, a popular early gay bar/club. Gays were through being dehumanized, called perverts and deviants, and being brutalized and arrested by the police for trying to live openly gay lives. They rose up in violence. In Warsaw in 1944, thousands of Poles could no longer endure brutal Nazi occupation and rose up in violence. And in Los Angeles, in 1992, African Americans rioted against police oppression, the mass incarceration of a million black men, and violence in their neighborhoods. And we should not forget a riot on a British ship carrying tea in Boston Harbor in 1775. This is a riot that is sanctified in our precious history. But I suppose it is acceptable for our founding fathers to resort to violence to found our great nation, but not for others to do so. One of Newtons Laws of Motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. As long as we live in a society where we dehumanize others, where we exploit others, where we beat down our neighbors with violence, our actions will be met with equal violence.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 23:37:00 +0000
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