(In)justice Is (Color)blind

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” — Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail

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It is too easy (as many white people do with a knee-jerk reaction) to beat one’s chest and unfriend people on FB over their attitude toward American police brutality toward African-Americans.

It’s also easy to stay silent. Until you can’t anymore.

What does either of these actually accomplish? Nada.

What actually works?

1) Teaching your kids to have empathy and compassion for others who don’t look like them. Make kids understand that today, it’s “them,” tomorrow it’s us. As Jews, we know this paradigm all too well. This is how you raise a generation of people who can co-exist with those that don’t look or speak like them, people that are decent humans and not xenophobic shmucks.

2) Press for more meaningful civilian oversight over police forces BY LAW. This takes much hard work and local lobbying, passage of laws and the energy to actually oversee and question and hold accountable police powers. But without this, it’s mostly in vain. Choose regular civilians, not career politicians for these boards, especially those already affected by unwarranted police violence.

3) Peaceful protest in Washington, a la MLK Jr. Congress must pass meaningful laws to protect civilians against police abuse. There must be harsher punishment (federal charges) for police who openly abuse civil rights of unarmed civilians. Body cameras could be made mandatory. Pensions and promotions can be conditioned on avoidance of abuse of unarmed civilians, among other factors. Frankly, police forces could be better professionalized and better paid.

4) Stop federal programs selling or giving military equipment to state and local police forces. Create a buy-back program to return said military arms to the feds and destroy them. Again, a federal legislation issue.

5) Give new police recruits and old hands alike training on engaging non-violently with unarmed civilians. Give them gamified practice of this in the community before they are officially part of the police force. Have them all learn basic negotiation and psychological profiling skills, for crying out loud.

6) Fight hate by overwhelming it with love. Build a positive, collaborative relationship with individual officers in your community. Make them feel like a partner in the process of community policing, rather than an adversary or cornered animal. Treat them with respect, but also know your rights at every moment and learn to defend yourselves (recording incidents, having a clear process for submitting abuse complaints, de-escalation for future incidents), etc. The police as a whole are not the enemy, but there are huge systemic issues (see above) and plenty of rogue police officers, both of which can and must be fixed. — It’s all too easy (and hardly surprising) to fall into a trap of “us vs. them” if your people are being victimized left and right.

But neither anger on social media nor police baiting nor blaming the President or whoever is the enemy of the day will have any lasting, meaningful effect.

Remember, this is the same President who actually managed to pass and sign a criminal justice reform bill, despite his own racist tendencies.

Acknowledging that policing in the U.S. is a runaway train in need of being stopped and put back on the rails isn’t a question of race.

This is a basic question of being a person who seeks justice or stays indifferent to its miscarriage (or worse, carries out said injustice).

We are all humans and all of us have equal human rights, especially one as basic as not being killed by police while unarmed, jogging, sleeping in one’s own bed or just living life while dark-skinned.

Enough is enough, my friends.