While we all managed our own stresses and adaptations in 2020, we could also hear the cries of others in our cities and those around the world loud and clear. A pandemic swept the world. An election made enemies of family and friends. The Black community lamented the end of more black lives at the hands of police. As children suffered in cages, Hispanic immigrants in America feared and experienced separation of their families. Our neighbors, friends, families lost jobs. Businesses closed. And layered between all of that were the personal crises that were amplified by the trauma of so many global crises.
Here, I want to focus on the Black Lives Matter movement, the protests, other recent acts of violence and my own response.
May 25. A black man was asphyxiated on camera… Again…
A white police officer yelled, “Put your fucking hands up right now!”
The black man, George Floyd, pleaded with police and sobbed from his car.
As two officers tried to shove him into the police car. “I can’t breathe!” George Floyd gargled. They all ended up on the ground.
George yelled, “Mama!”
Derek Chauvin placed his knee firmly on George Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes.
- One minute,
- two minutes,
- three minutes,
- four minutes,
- five minutes,
- six minutes,
- seven minutes,
- eight minutes,
- nine minutes
- and 39 seconds.
The moments at the end of his life Floyd wheezed, “Man, I can’t breath.”
Those were his last words.
Those words echoed the last words of other black men who’d been choked out by police.
Immediately following this killing of yet another black man by a police officer, people across racial groups stood up to say, “Enough!” Protests and vigils were organized around the world. Police responded with photo opps and military force.
Even as those voices rang clear, police across the country continued to kill and harass innocent black people even when on camera. And some defended the police officers while assassinating the character of the assassinated.
Personally, I responded with lament. I learned about lament and its history. I put it to action by regularly lamenting while walking around the police headquarters, court building and jail. They are all located within a few blocks of each other.
Massive protests
Video of the officer with his knee on George Floyd’s neck sparked outrage across America like few events in our history. Chauvin’s face showed no remorse or concern. People screamed and pleaded with him to stop as they watched in shock.
Protests began the next day on May 26 in Minneapolis, where George Floyd lived and died. Protests spread quickly across the U.S. and crowds swelled in participation daily. Over 15 million people participated in some form of protest. Some experts say the total BLM protest participants were the largest in U.S. history.
In Fresno, where I live, over 3,000 protested peacefully. Organized by Fresno State NAACP leaders and local Black Lives Matter members, the crowd walked from city hall along Blackstone Avenue, a major street through the heart of the city. It was the largest protest in Fresno history and remained peaceful.
“The vast majority of demonstration events associated with the BLM movement [were] non-violent. In more than 93% of all demonstrations connected to the movement, demonstrators [did] not engage in violence or destructive activity. Peaceful protests [were] reported in over 2,400 distinct locations around the country. Violent demonstrations, meanwhile, [were] limited to fewer than 220 locations — under 10% of the areas that experienced peaceful protests. In many urban areas like Portland, Oregon, for example, which [saw] sustained unrest [after] Floyd’s killing, violent demonstrations [were] largely confined to specific blocks, rather than dispersed throughout the city (CNN, September 1, 2020).”
More white people than ever were moved to action and learning. Book clubs and other learning groups formed in response. More reading of black history sparked shock among us white people. It’s a slow process. We must first unlearn much of the history we’ve been taught by our education system. Initial readings of Black history cause cognitive dissonance. Subsequent readings result in deeper processing alongside unlearning false lessons. Listening and learning then must shift our thinking, and lead to becoming an anti-racist and an ally of POC.
Military force from law enforcement
Despite the overwhelmingly peaceful protests, police responded with a military show of force and violence. Initially, police used flash bangs and tear gas to clear rioters. As rioters and police escalated the violence toward each other, President Trump stated he would send federal military force to stop the rioters. Before federal troops were sent in though, police responded with their own military vehicles and tactical gear. Law enforcement defends the use of such vehicles and gear as just a show of force. It’s more than the gear that is tactical, however. The police responded with military force to face American citizens, who were responding to that same level of deadly force used against the bodies of POC since the discovery of the Americas.
Lessons learned up close and personal
In 2015, my wife and I moved to a historically poor neighborhood in downtown Fresno to live alongside and learn from the poor and forgotten. We wanted to experience their experience. How do they survive after the city turned its back on them decades ago? We wanted to be a connection. We wanted to be good neighbors. Through the experience, we’ve learned more from our new neighbors than possible through any books, podcasts, videos or lectures.
In Fresno, we’ve seen police brutality toward people of color with little to no justice for the police perpetrators. Nationally, we’ve seen more and more cell phone and officer videos of excessive force. Officers have acted with impunity in the face of knowing they were being recorded. In Fresno, the police department most often pays off families in civil suits, with no charges for brutal tactics on black and brown bodies.
The long lament
How long!? How long before justice is served on the racist American justice system? How long before the stories of people of color are heard? How long before systemic racism is addressed in the United States?
Years and months before George Floyd’s death we, as a nation, witnessed dozens of high profile instances of police brutality ending black lives. White Supremacists marched on Charlottesville, VA in 2017. They rose up in response to the planned removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. The violence of the protest reached a peak when a neo-Nazi member drove his car into a crowd, injuring 19 and killing one. The tension of that day was felt across the country and around the world.
President Trump made statements dismissing actions of the White Supremacists. Of course, his words only energized the protests.
In 2014 after the killing of Michael Brown, CBS News reported, “St. Louis police, dressed in riot gear, stood in a straight line, shields up and face masks down in a standoff with protestors. The media assembled on the sidelines, cameras poised to capture the latest. There was tear gas, burning buildings, chants and signs. Protesters came armed with a message, a message that would echo through the Missouri night sky in the days and weeks after Michael Brown’s death. It was a message heard across the nation in more protests for other black Americans who died by police hands. ‘Black lives matter,’ they chanted, wrote and tweeted.”
About a month before George Floyd’s death, Breonna Taylor was shot to death in her apartment when police served a warrant at the wrong apartment.
Another month earlier, Ahmaud Arberry was murdered by a retired white police detective and his son in the middle of the street in broad daylight.
In 2014 to 2015, studies showed that a black person was three times more likely to be killed than a white person, when the victim is unarmed or posed a minimal threat to police.
History shows that early policing efforts began in order to imprison recently freed slaves, so they could be used for free labor. Nearly 200 years later, Jim Crow limited the life of black people, and punished them for petty crimes. Black men were lynched for looking at white women. Lynchings were a public spectacle where white people took photos of hanging black bodies and sent them to their families.
In 2020, I felt the lament of my black and brown neighbors deeper than ever. I openly discussed police brutality and White Supremacy on social media more than ever. My wife and I joined a peaceful march and vigil in Southeast Fresno, a community of primarily black families, with a long history of neglect from Fresno leaders.
I attended another vigil in North Fresno organized by a predominately white church. White, Black, Brown people lined the street for several blocks, toting signs expressing “Black Lives Matter,” “I can’t breathe,” “Mama,” and all kinds of supportive sentiments as well as outrage.
Around that time, I read a book by Soong Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament. It opened my eyes to the place of Black church music in the long lament Blacks have lived in America. I also learned how lament has been lost in White church music.
The book enlightened me about the practice of lament through Negro spirituals. I imagined how long black and brown people in America have been crying out for racial justice and progress. In response, White Supremacy emerged in another institution or form of discrimination. White Supremacy is like a virus that transforms to stay alive. When a virus changes, new remedies must be discovered. For many black people, spirituals and lament allowed them to carry on in the face of slavery, Jim Crow, systemic injustice and White Supremacy.
Lament in the Psalms involves mourning that leads to hope. It might even include mourning with anger at God and pleading for help. “How long must we suffer?” is a common lament before recalling God’s compassion and care throughout history, which provides some sense of hope in the present.
In the 80s, I was captivated by the lyrics and the sound of hip hop music. It was probably partly due to my desire to rebel. To be different. But the beat and sampling and rap artistry drew me to the deeper messages of hip hop — a form of lament for Black people in America.
During those years, I listened to Public Enemy, KRS-One, NWA and plenty more. I mention these three because I now realize they were the beginning of my education in Black history and its impact on their lives today. In fact, they were the new, public sound of Black lament. The media labeled hip hop as Gangster Rap. Some rappers took on that persona. But originators called it Reality Rap, because they were describing the reality of POC in the ghettos of American life.
My attempt to join the long lament
I started to imagine what it would look like for white people to join POC in their long lament. POC have suffered under settlement, slavery, lynchings, police brutality, systemic injustice, White Supremacy, and institutional racism. This is the history of America schools don’t teach.
In 2020, I asked several black friends about planning a public lament. They were all deep in their own community mourning and lament, sparked by the loss of yet another black man at the hands of police. The trauma of fresh brutality opened generational wounds. They felt it in their bodies. They’ve seen and experienced police brutality through generations. I couldn’t even fathom the depth of the pain.
Without so many words, they appreciated the thought but were hurting too much and caring for their communities to take on one more thing. The hurt I saw on their faces and the rage I saw in their bodies, and the lament I heard in their voices were impossible for me to enter. But I listened and acknowledged the neverending lament.
It was yet another lesson for me. It took me deeper. The disbelief, anger, pain, and outrage I felt has been their reality for centuries. I was dipping my toes into the water of organized brutality after so many POC have drowned in it.
Even after listening to early Reality Rap and watching movies and documentaries on the history of the Black experience in America, the pain and rage and lament were an ocean and I was barely up to my ankles of the vast depth of generational pain.
I decided to begin my own practice of lament. I live about 10 blocks North of the Fresno County Jail, Sheriff’s Department, Fresno Police Department and Fresno County courthouse. So, I decided to walk around these buildings to lament the systemic injustice and generational wounds that emanated from these institutions of our government. These are central places where Black lives don’t matter as much as white lives. And these institutions operate in every city across America on a local level.
I walked around the buildings and mourned the lives of people in jail, mourned for their families, and cried out to God, “How long will people of color suffer police brutality, underrepresentation, and mass incarceration!?”
I walked and mourned the attitudes and impunity afforded to law enforcement officers, lawyers and judges. I cried out to God to break the system, to expose the brutality, to move good cops to speak up.
I remembered how nations have overturned racist systems to right wrongs and begin efforts at reconciliation in South Africa, Rwanda, and Germany.
I walked and mourned the courthouse, where people of color suffer longer sentences than their white counterparts. I mourned how money bends justice for the rich. I mourned the lack of resources for poor people to get a fair trial.
Often hope is hard to find. Christian lament and the Negro spirituals tapped into historical Bible stories to trust God would revive hope and bring justice.
North and South
As I mentioned, I live North of the county jail, courthouse, police and sheriff’s offices. I had to walk South to get there. I walked past a lot of concrete, litter, homeless people, a methadone clinic, stray dogs, piss and vomit to get there.
There were days I didn’t want to make the walk. It wasn’t a scenic route by any means! I could easily walk North past nice homes and landscaped lawns. Easily a lighter load. The lament walks were more difficult, heavy from the burden POC in America have endured for centuries. And it was heavy from the lack of resources in Southern Fresno, where life has been made more difficult.
How could I be an ally to POC by taking an easy route? They didn’t have an easier route on the hard days. The communities that protested in response to George Floyd’s death chose not to walk the easier way.
I continue to make the lament walks weekly, always mourning and always looking for hope. The mourning was easily found in one headline, one photo or one video. Lament came from the multitude of headlines, photos and videos broadcasting the long history of police brutality and broader injustices toward POC. Hope took work and a leap of faith. I asked my friends of color how they find hope in lament. My Christian friends look to the stories in the Bible of God’s faithfulness to the oppressed people of Israel. Pharoah let God’s people go after decades of slavery with no hope of freedom. My non-Christian friends look to lament to guide their actions. They are moved to make things better, to change the unjust systems in America, to amplify the history of POC and work for hope from the long lament.
