Thoughts on a Black Lives Matter rally in Berkeley

I recently participated in a march and gathering in my city of Berkeley, protesting the murder by police of a man and a woman of color.  

Police lynching and police violence has to be prevented and subject to justice.   I know it has happened on camera and innumerable times off camera.

 

My very first client as an attorney died a few years later at the hands of police who tased him to death when responding to a minor domestic violence matter.  He was Hispanic.   I know of others who have died by police violence who were merely exercising their right of free speech and assembly. 

If I step into any courthouse where criminal issues are being handled, the pigment of people’s skin will be a magnitude darker than those of the people outside.  Every statistic in this county shows that the chance of someone having an unjustified or exaggerated encounter with police, with courts, or with the correctional system correlates with melanin.

 

The corrosive nature of racism is visible in the fear or despair or rage or defensiveness of so many black men, as well as the fear, defensiveness, and callousness of so many whites.

The murders by police terrified the young woman who is my African American adopted daughter who marched with me and my wife.

I am not fond of chanting slogans generally.    

The one slogan I could repeat with a clear conscience was “Black Lives Matter”.  It seems a substantial segment of Americans needs reminding of this repeatedly until somehow “your individual life and life-experience is important”,  will be what consistently comes to mind when Americans of any race meet and react to African-Americans. 

But other slogans, I cannot agree with:  

“No Justice, No Peace!”.  Peace is necessary for justice.  Justice makes peace possible.     While a peace based on oppression may be intolerable, a shattering of the peace no more brings justice than looting brings economic advancement.  Chaos destroys the conditions for opportunity and equity and substitutes acting out anger for the truth seeking necessary for justice. 

“Justice for…”   Yes, but when “Justice for…” means, skip all the legalities and punish the evil doer, it grossly misunderstands that any system of justice requires yielding the righteous fury about a perceived victimization to a formal system for truth-seeking, and controlled retribution. 

“De-fund the police”    A number of the speakers spoke of moving money from police budgets to community and social services.    As the Beatles’ “Revolution” went “We’d all love to see the plan.”

As out-of-control, anxiety provoking, or ineffectual as the police can be, every modern society has decided they need them given the constant presence in every society of viscous, crazy, and grossly dishonest individuals.

 

“Black Power”.   Fifty years into this slogan I confess that I still do not know what it is intended to mean in practice.  But that is for a different essay.

PL