The Injustice in Justice

Kyle Rittenhouse cleared of all charges.

A black. The black. The only black.

A 12 year old boy killed over a toy gun. Unrelated but related.

7 years ago yesterday, November 22, Tamir Rice was shot and killed by police for playing with a toy gun in a park. The officer was cleared of all charges.

4 days ago Kyle Rittenhouse was cleared of all charges for killing Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, two unarmed protesters. Like the police officer who killed a child, Kyle feared for his life.

I’m sad, I’m hurt, I’m tired. But I’m not surprised. On a micro-level, everything about the way the judge speaks and acts told us what to expect. On a macro-level, everything about the way our country speaks and acts told us what to expect.

Expect it to be ok to kill black people. Expect it to be ok to kill people who defend black people.

I’m sad, I’m hurt, I’m tired. But I’m not surprised.

A black. The black. The only black. The words play over in my head like a broken record. An idiom made irrelevant by the progression of technology. The progression of the value of a black life hasn’t kept up.

Tamir should be in his first year of college now. A toy gun scared an overly-armed grown man.

On a micro-level, Tamir Rice and Kyle Rittenhouse have nothing to do with each other. Tamir was a child killed in 2014. The protests where Rittenhouse found himself armed and prepared to kill happened last year in defense of someone else entirely.

But on a macro-level, they’re all connected, aren’t they? Tamir, one of too many black names whose deaths inspired protests they’ll never see, whose injustices prompted conversations they’ll never have a say in. The weight of these deaths build up crushing every one of us, pushing us further, breaking us more, bringing more and more of us to the streets where it is apparently still ok to kill.

All this death, and what do we have to show for it?

A black. The black. The only black.

Words said by a judge in 2021. And we still look to our courts for justice.

All this death, and what do we have to show for it?

I don’t believe Kyle Rittenhouse went to that protest with the explicit intent to kill. But he drove hours out of his way with an illegally acquired weapon to enter into a hostile situation prepared to take a life, and we - our system of justice - are ok with that.

I don’t hate Kyle. I don’t know him, and I don’t know what I hope for him. But I mourn for his victims, I mourn the compassion that dissipates between “the sides” when one of us dies, I mourn that there are sides exist at all when one of us dies, and I mourn another lost hope of justice.

But I will continue to hope. I will continue to work. I will continue to speak and to reach and to love. And in two days, I will sit down with loved ones and reflect on all I have to be thankful for. But today, I will be sad.

Facing the Past to Heal the Present

I recently got around to watching Summer of Soul, a documentary of the forgotten 1969 Harlem Cultural festival that is considered the Black equivalent of Woodstock. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend you do - the history, the never-before-told stories and never-before-seen footage are phenomenally captured. The footage of the event sat in the basement for 50 years, and the first time it's ever been seen publicly was when they started airing it this year.

Something happened to me as I was watching the story unfold. Listening to the themes and the struggles of the day, I was hit with this painful recognition that we are all fighting the same battles we fought back in the summer of 1969, just with new language. Over 60 years later and our struggles serve as a reminder of an open wound on our society.

In 1969, the world was consumed by the idea of landing on the moon, while people in the same country were starving and going without basic needs. Sound familiar? As our world today reaches for technological heights we couldn’t have even dreamed of 20 years ago, malnutrition, lack of access to education, and even lack of access to clean water permeates communities around us.

It's the nature of our society that we have not been able to evolve and really address bias and bigotry, poverty, hatred

It's the nature of our society that we have not been able to evolve and really address bias and bigotry, poverty, hatred - it's a self-perpetuating cycle that isn't breaking. I feel like we have one shot now at really getting it right, to course-correct this runaway train from veering so far off its track.

The last 60 or more years have seen growth in sympathy and even empathy for the marginalized among us, yet we’re still stuck in place. We’re moving in circles believing our movement is progress. But something is broken because we can not move beyond flurries of activism to evolve toward sustainable change.

What we need more of isn’t sympathy or even empathy - what we need is compassion. Sympathy is being sorry someone is in pain; empathy is feeling another’s pain. Compassion is a commitment to ending the pain.

We've gotten lost in the belief that we need to feel another’s feelings to make a difference, and while the notion and effort involved is noble, it doesn’t produce change. Instead, it becomes overwhelming as we try to take in all the suffering and injustice around us, and threatens to push us away from the very causes we care so much about.

For BIPOC individuals there is a fully felt sense of reliving the trauma of the past because the past is never truly behind us. We are aware of the daily suffering of our communities and often experience a sense of hopelessness as we witness and experience the daily indignities that continue to inflict wounds.

We cannot afford to get lost in the pursuit of latching on to the feelings of others, we need to care about them and let that compassionate approach move us.

The path to justice isn’t going to be paved by pretending our society is a fairy tale with a happy ending. Acknowledging the dark spots doesn’t have to diminish the love you may feel for your world, your history, or even your country. The beauty of love is that it can know the true stories about mistakes and tragedy and still stand strong - indeed, can it even be called love if we hide those truths? We can have a complicated relationship with something we love dearly. No human, and therefore no institution run by humans, will ever be perfect. There is no sense in pretending otherwise.

How do we form a more perfect union?

Choose hope over despair. Choose love over contempt. Own up to our mistakes. Keep promises.

There are no quick remedies to centuries' worth of disenfranchisement.

Progress takes all of us. We all have a role to play. It’s time to get off the carousel of well-intentioned but ultimately ineffective acts that the social justice movement has fostered and focus on what really drives change - the capacity of our hearts and the hearts of those around us.

What Really Needs to Fall Away

Working with clients during the Fall season can create some wonderful opportunities for reflection and introspection. Fall is a particularly special time of year for me, especially when I lived in the northeastern part of the United States. While Maryland officially falls below the Mason-Dixon line we still benefited from the change of season with all of the visual splendor of the texture and colors of the falling leaves. There was also a bit of a chill that came into the air bringing with it a subtle message that whispered "wake up, get ready, winter is coming".

I use the fall season as an opportunity to work with my clients so that I am working with nature to open their awareness to how they show up in the world. What areas of life, work, personal and professional interaction, and behavior need to respond to the crisp air that is moving in? What internal shift do you want to make so that some old thinking or negative behavior begins to fall away?

Many workplace initiatives never gain traction because leaders don't change their behavior and thus the workforce has no identifiable experience of the need to do anything differently. The workplace continues to operate at a less than optimal level. You cannot change behaviors that you don't or won't acknowledge. Whether you are a part of an organization, a community, a place of worship, or a special interest group you are an individual who is capable of powerful positive sustainable change. The type of change that makes you better and thus our world shifts in response to your desire to change and to your intentional action toward that goal.

Use whatever the world offers in the way of tools to be all that you were intended to be and do all of the good that you are capable of doing. As the Fall season prepares us for winter may we all be inspired by its beauty and take the time to observe and reflect on what really needs to fall away.