Here are a couple of pictures of my hometown taken Saturday evening during blue hour. Little did I know that 24 hours later, the scene would be much different. The scenes that played out in Chicago and other large cities across the country are now working their way into smaller communities, too. Aurora saw peaceful protests earlier in the day on Sunday but they turned violent Sunday evening. The city is under curfew again this evening.
As I mentioned in the Central Camera post, I don’t agree with the violence but I understand it. I just wish there was another way to open a dialogue. I wish that the rioters could understand that oftentimes they’re hurting the very people they’re purporting to represent. In Aurora, for example, one of the shops that was vandalized was My Daughter’s Dress Boutique, a nonprofit organization that provides affordable formal dresses and accessories to underprivileged girls. The organization was spared looting, thanks to the vigilance and courage of a neighboring business owner but there are still broken windows to mend and a community on edge again as evening approaches.
I think the problem is that we’ve refused to open that dialogue for so long that the anger is now spilling out indiscriminately. I can’t help but think back to Colin Kaepernick’s protests during his time in the NFL. As a society, we didn’t want to listen. I hear countless people now questioning why the protests can’t be “civil.” Do they remember the reaction to Kaepernick? Do they realize that he’s still ostracized by the NFL? Do they understand that what he did was civil and he was still silenced? Civil didn’t work to get our attention. We need to learn how to better listen to those who act civilly. Maybe then we can avoid less civil means of attracting attention…
Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station wrote an amazing piece when the Kaepernick thing was playing out. It’s lengthy but well worth the time to read. The TL;DR version can be summed up by this statement, though:
“Respect is a two-way street. If you want respect, true respect, sincere respect, then you have to give it. If you want respect, you have to do the things necessary to earn it each and every single day. There are no short cuts and no exceptions. This is true of men and true of nations.”
There are a lot of people not feeling respected by the country that they are citizens of. That country is founded on a simple premise, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” We were doing a far from perfect job of living out those words when they were penned and one man could own another man. We’re still doing a far from perfect job, 244 years later when the amount of melanin in one’s skin can make life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness easier or a lot harder. Until we learn how to truly live the core principle that defines our country, we’re going to have unrest. God grant them the same resolve that a bunch of New Englanders had when they wantonly destroyed property in the form of tea once upon a time.