[caption id=”attachment_109316″ align=”aligncenter” width=”1024″]James Cartmill holds an American flag while protesting in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, after the announcement that a grand jury decided not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old. Several thousand protesters marched through Oakland with some shutting down freeways, looting, burning garbage and smashing windows. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
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A few words on Ferguson that pertain to the events of Monday: the lead-up to the grand jury announcement, the speculation, the innuendo.
I watched with discomfiting interest as the digital commentariat fought an ignoble rumble over who was right and who was wrong about the criminality of police officer Darren Wilson’s actions; as disputatious parties buttressed their claims with interpretations of an incomplete story to prevail in the argument. You see, that is what becomes of these wars. It becomes less about justice for a slain teen, justice for his family, justice for a law enforcement official, justice for a community — it becomes more about justice, vindication, for what it is we have to say. The allure of quarreling, the promise of adrenaline, is powerful. Its byproduct is the obfuscation of righteous purpose.
Weeks ago, a family grieved for its child; Monday night, it was let down that there will be no legal consequence for his death. Monday night, the police officer who fired the shots was absolved of criminal wrongdoing, but he was not relieved of the terrible guilt of taking another person’s life. There is nothing but sadness, tragedy, and humanity here. Yet much of what I have perceived is the encouragement of racial tension and the depraved intrigue that an inceptive act of violence will beget more violence.
Here is where I place my faith: In the capacity of disagreeing people to express their differences without animus, and in their willingness to achieve accord. Here is where I place my prayers: In God, that we might be so brave as to acknowledge our fallibility and the pain that lingers from generations not too long ago, and to work earnestly to live in total brotherhood, absent fear. Here is where I place my focus: On the deceased and the man responsible for it, on the anger and the residual wounds that have come of it, on the strength of empathy and understanding over the weakness of bitterness and insularity, and on the agents of such good virtue who prefer ultimate harmony to perpetual discord.
This is not a resolution of what has unfolded in Ferguson; there is no totally satisfying closure to that. Nor is it so cheap as to be merely platitudinous. It is a frame of mind. We cannot undo injury. If we are fortunate, we can heal it. And if we are conscious, we can at least afford ourselves the opportunity to prevent future instances of it. I know of no psalm that promises to the incendiaries the inheritance of the Earth. The Earth is for the peacemakers. Let us all become them, and then have the world for ourselves.
