Skyscraper Solidarity

I get mad at our corrupt, white supremacist hierarchical society so often that I probably sound like a broken record.

No matter how much we rally, protest and march, it never seems to be enough. Is it possible to have a nonviolent revolution in the United States? Sometimes I question if our collective principles are enough to fight this system and the powers that be.

Here we are, the day after the Sean Bell trial and not a whole lot has changed. The three police officers who gunned down Bell, an unarmed man, on his wedding day were acquitted of all charges yesterday by a judge in Queens. After work, I joined a rally outside of the courthouse, followed by a march through Jamaica, right to the site where Bell was murdered. I felt a lot of emotions walking down those streets, yelling to the top of my lungs. I thought the outpour of support from activists from all over the city was something unlike anything I’d felt before. Once we started marching, it was like all the energy and outrage were culminating into a beautiful demonstration against the repeated attacks on our community. I also felt a lot of solidarity with all the Queens community members who honked their horns, yelled out of windows and gathered outside of beauty salons to watch us rally through the streets. There was just something 500 angry people screaming “fuck the police” that got me all fired up inside.

But it also makes me sad that we have to do this. The event itself was a great demonstration in the face of the injustices that were carried out in that courthouse yesterday, but the fact remains that an innocent man was killed, and police officers murder dozens of unarmed black and brown people for no reason every year. These people have become powerful symbols in their communities of the systematic annihilation of people of color, which has brought together hundreds of discussions amongst scholars and activists, and has brought tremendous attention to the problems plaguing corrupt policing and the severe lack of “Professional Standards.”

But why does it happen every day? How many marches and rallies and protests do we have to assemble before we change our own government? Is true revolution in America possible without force? I’m getting more and more skeptical about the principles of nonviolent demonstration as I grow older. The thing that frustrated me the most about the march yesterday was that the police were, in effect, leading it. Even though we were a crowd of hundreds, there were police flanking us on either side, and we were accompanied by miniature police cars in the very front of the march. There were calls to break formation and veer to the side, or even make an about-face to throw the officers off, but ultimately we all respected the organizers of the rally and kept everything peaceful and orderly.

While I understand that they wanted to make sure that nothing got out of hand so that the media couldn’t blow anything out of proportion, there’s also a part of me that thinks a protest is supposed to be raucous and a little out of control. Still, though, on the other hand, the families of the victims don’t need to have their loved one’s memory associated with a bunch of rowdy activists; The time and place for that behavior comes sometimes, but yesterday wasn’t the time. I’m still torn.

It kills me that whenever I decide to bring a child into this world, this is what he or she will be born into. I know now that this world is not kind to people who look like me; and they are even less so if you happen to be born a male. The children at the rally really made me reflect on how I want them to grow up and have more freedom than we do in 2008.

America’s supposed to be free, but for who? When I can take a train from the richest city on the planet 45 minutes into a neighborhood where police were allowed to assassinate a man in cold blood with fifty shots, I ask you, where is the justice?