vengeance vs. leverage

an old facebook friend of mine, a few days ago, shared this Martin Luther King Jr. quote about the inability of violence to bring peace.

I was tempted to respond in a comment, something like "I hope you're using this to denounce all the terrible police violence and other terrible racially-motivated violence in the world, rather than as a shallow move to discredit some or all of the protestors who are speaking out against that violence, just because their response makes you uncomfortable."

but I didn't.

I've only been to one protest event in my life. it was at the end of 2014, during Dr. Jenny Bay's grad seminar on gender, rhetoric, & the body. Dr. Bay suspended our class meeting that day for anyone who wanted to go march, and despite my general hesitance to be seen making any kind of fuss at all, I left my books in my office, joined my peers, and marched. chanted (not loudly). laid down in the street in my red winter coat. listened to others' impassioned speeches and pondered in my highly introspective way what all of it meant.

that was a long time ago. I don't remember everything about that cloudy Indiana winter day but I remember one of the chants:

no justice, no peace.

no justice, no peace.

if violence cannot bring any lasting peace, as MLK has said... well, neither does injustice.

if I ignore the violence and injustice that others experience, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

there are plenty of parallels between lyrics from Hamilton and the happenings of now. it's such a rich and tightly-woven work of art that you can look into it for insight and inspiration every morning for the rest of your days, never running out of reminders about what's difficult and crucial and powerful and beautiful about life. the closing number alone! "when my time is up, have I done enough?" it's gorgeous and it's full of heart-wrenching provocation like that.

yesterday we, along with the rest of the internet, watched the Disney+ release of the Hamilton film (thanks to friend Kay who shared her account info with us for the occasion).

these lines from "My Shot" stood out a little bit extra to me as I watched the protagonist take up a place on the soapbox and monologue:

And? If we win our independence?

Is that a guarantee of freedom for our descendants?

Or will the blood we shed begin an endless

Cycle of vengeance and death with no defendants?

I don't think most of the protests going on today are about vengeance. thankfully. and thankfully most of them aren't violent protests either.

there's another thought-provoking line on independence later on at the end of Act I, too. the exchange between Burr and Hamilton before the latter goes on to write a large portion of The Federalist Papers:

Burr: The constitution’s a mess

Hamilton: So it needs amendments

Burr: It’s full of contradictions

Hamilton: So is independence.

and so it is. independence is a neat idea. but we're also all connected. we all depend on so much outside ourselves. what "justice" and "freedom" really mean is a whole other set of questions, I admit. but we have to start somewhere. admit that not everyone is treated so equally as our Declaration of Independence implies they should be. stop ignoring that inequality just because it mostly doesn't affect us. start somewhere. change your perspective. change the way things are.

or at least try.

{ some holiday reading/viewing: Frederick Douglass's 4th of July speech from 1852 + Douglass's desendants read and reflect on said speech. }