Sometimes I go and sit in the city and meditate. There's something about watching life play out without interfering. When you just sit and watch life, all sorts of amazing and interesting things happen right in front of your eyes. When you don't have the need to do anything and don't have any kind of agenda. You find that life continues to go on and interact with you, without the need of you doing anything. This is a story about one of those days.
It was a lightly cloudy sunny Sunday afternoon. The temperature was pleasantly warm without being too warm. I arrived in the city around noon. I like to change variables as a method of seeing how those variables effect the environment in which I'm in, a form of experimentation. This day I had a couple signs with me, I was holding a sign that said, "You Are Loved" and I had another sign sitting next to me that said, "It's OK". I was barefoot and wearing gym shorts and a t-shirt. I sat in the lotus position and remained still and silent.
For a while I interacted with those who wanted interaction. When someone would look at me, I would make eye contact with them. Sometimes we would share a smile, other times we would exchange Love or encouragement with our eyes. Most would pass by and read my signs out of the corner of their eyes pretending not to notice me or not even look in my direction. Most of those who would make eye contact with me or that would interact with me were women and children. Most of the men would avoid eye contact all together. That's not to say all men avoided me, there were a couple who smiled and made eye contact. Most of the young children would make eye contact with no thought whatsoever. The older children who are closer to their teen years were less likely to look in my direction.
Several people took my picture, most of whom tried their very best to do it discreetly as so I wouldn't notice. They would pretend to take a picture of something "in my direction", one person walked towards me and just held their phone in front of them to take a sneaky picture of me. I had a couple people ask me for my permission to take my photo, in which I simply gave them my ok with my eyes or a simple nod of the head. After some time, I noticed a woman having her picture taken by her mom across the street from me. We made eye contact, and she came over and asked me if she could take her photo with me and if she could also hold a sign. I agreed and she sat next to me while looking through my signs, she decided to hold a sign that says, "You Are Not Your Thoughts".
When she first came up to me, I remained silent and communicated with my eyes. After her mother took the photo of us, she proceeded to ask me questions, so I spoke to her. She asked some questions about me and told me about herself and her parents, who were next to us. After a little while, they walked away to go about their day. It was at this time I decided to sit perfectly still and not interact with anyone whatsoever, I would just stare straight ahead and let whatever happen, happen. I became aware with my peripheral vision, that much more people were willing to look in my direction and read my signs without me looking at them.
After sitting still and not moving anything including my eyes for some time I decided to start looking around again. A women walked up to me and gave me a double fist bump and asked if I'm good or if I needed food, I gave her a thumbs up. There were several people who just stood or sat near me. This day happened to be when ArtPrize was going on in Grand Rapids. For those of you who haven't heard of it, in simplest terms, there is art all over the city and hundreds of thousands of people come to participate and view. Since ArtPrize was going on there were a lot of people downtown.
I couldn't help but notice that the majority of the people downtown at ArtPrize were Caucasian with very few of any other ethnicities. I also noticed that for the four or so hours I sat in place, I only saw two police officers who were causally strolling down the street having a chat as if they were old pals. Aside from the uniforms they were wearing, you wouldn't even be able to tell they were on duty police officers. A thought came into my mind at that time, it was "I wonder where all the police are, maybe the police have decided not to interfere anymore unless absolutely necessary". I looked around and thought "this is really pleasant, having all those people getting along and not needing a police presence".
My stomach decided to make it known that it wanted some food so I decided to order some food from a restaurant downtown. I packed up my signs, and went and picked up the food. On the way home after getting my food, I went through a predominantly black area of town. As I was approaching an intersection, I witnessed an officer stop at the light and turn the lights on the car. He proceeds to get out and walk up to a black man who was sitting peacefully on a city bench minding his own business. Within less than a minute, two more officers came racing up on bicycles. The three officers proceeded to surround the innocent black man and put their hands on their guns. From my perspective, this black man didn't appear to be doing anything but sitting on a bench. I didn't see any drugs, weapons, bombs, or anything illegal whatsoever. They were simply asking him what he was doing and if he was committing any crimes.
I stood there not understanding what was happening, I couldn't understand why this black man was being surrounded but three white officers with their hands on their guns. It felt as if they were just trying to intimidate him and trying to provoke him into committing a crime. I wanted to speak up and say "why are you bothering this man?" I wanted to walk up and sit next to the black man on the bench, but I knew the officers wouldn't want anyone "interfering with their investigation". I didn't know what to do, I felt helpless, and I could only imagine how the man in the middle of them felt. I thought "he must be feeling extremely helpless and scared", what is someone to do when the people who are responsible for keeping them safe are the ones making them feel unsafe.
I did all that I could think to do in the moment. I committed a crime within 15 feet of the three officers. I am not going to say what crime I committed but I assure you it was a crime, and it was within direct view of all three officers. I didn't really have a plan, my thought was "maybe if the cops have to deal with my actual crime, they will leave this innocent man alone". To my chagrin, the officers were completely unaware of my presence whatsoever, to focused on the black "criminal". My mind couldn't make sense of what was happening. Here I was blatantly committing a crime within 15 feet of three officers and all they cared about was protecting themselves from someone who was simply trying to mind their own business. The thought came into my mind "it's because I'm a white man, they don't care, they only care about what "crime" they can charge the black man with.
I made every attempt I could to get their attention so they would leave him alone to no avail. I did everything short of screaming "look at me, I'm committing a crime". I wonder if I had yelled that, if that would've even made a difference. I knew there was nothing I could do, and I knew that they didn't care about my actual crime whatsoever, so I decided to move on and head home with my food. I said a prayer for that man and hoped the officers would just bored with him and move on. As I was leaving more officers were showing up to protect us from this "extremely dangerous black man minding his own business".
Black people have been speaking up about police injustice for a long time. As a white man, I acknowledge that I have 100% have white privilege and just because you may be white and have never personally experienced it, does not mean that it doesn't exist. This is one story about one incident in one city involving only a few officers, but people of color say this is happening all over the country all the time and I believe them wholeheartedly.
Have you ever asked yourself why, most of the people who seem to be in favor of the police and not wanting to hold any of them accountable are white people. While people of color are mostly saying the police and justice system is broken. Why do white people need the police so bad. Simple answer, white people think they need police to protect them from people of color, that's it. I am not here as a voice for people of color. People of color are just that, people, and they don't need me to be their voice, they have their own to give. I am here as a white man being a voice to white people saying, "the system is broken, and it needs to be fixed. THIS IS NOT OK!". This is a discussion white people need to have, we can't just make it go away by ignoring it. People of color have been trying to have this conversation for quite some time to no avail. More white people need to step up and start having this conversation.
I will no longer use my white privilege to remain silent and ignore the injustices of ALL PEOPLE. People of color are treated as less than in this society. I have witnessed it firsthand. White people claim persecution simply because people of color want to be treated as humans. Every human being treated equally isn't persecution towards white people, it's equality. White people view themselves as "better than" people of color so when people who are "less than" try to be equal, it's viewed as persecution.
These statements do not apply to everyone and every situation, not all white people are racist, not all police officers are bad at their job, and every situation and person is different. Police need to be held responsible for their actions, the same as anyone else in any other line of work, it's that simple, police accountability. If you kill someone as a McDonalds employee, you will lose your job and go to prison. If you kill someone as a police officer, you get a paid vacation and a pat on the back, if you kill enough people, you might even get a promotion. Does no one see how truly fucked up that is? Love and Peace!