And once again, our world is burning. I’m almost overwhelmed with the numbness I feel, yet I know this feeling well enough to know that it means I am in fact full of feelings but they are more than I am capable of facing right now.
One thing I am not feeling is powerlessness. I write because I know my words have power; I’m still very much struggling with what to say and how to say it, but I saw things today that need to be said.
I was privileged to attend a Black Lives Matter march in Manchester, New Hampshire today. Privileged to be healthy and low-risk for COVID, privileged to work a job where I don’t have to come into close physical contact with people AND I can miss a meeting to go to a rally, privileged to have the means to get there and to feel safe. I went wearing my clerical collar, which I have so far only worn for public protest or ordinations. I went thus dressed with the belief that as visible clergy, my presence carried more power than it would otherwise. By marching in my collar with my “Black Lives Matter” sign, I imagine I am saying that God believes that Black Lives Matter.
Having seen footage from Ferguson and elsewhere of clergy standing between cops and other protestors, changing the tenor of a protest about to get violent by linking arms and singing songs, I went aware that I may be called upon to be a protector or a peacekeeper. I also went aware that I wasn’t prepared to be arrested.
What I found in Manchester, a city I do not know but which was less than an hour’s drive from where I’ve been staying for the past two months, was a spirited and peaceful gathering of about 1000 people (my estimation, supported by some press coverage), led by young black people. I arrived to find a crowd gathered - somewhat though not perfectly socially distanced - in Veterans Park. Someone was speaking into a megaphone words I couldn’t understand, and then the crowd opened and organizers started marching, past me into the street. “Well, I may as well join at the front,” I figured, and started walking. Tears filled my eyes seeing these young black folk proudly asserting the value of their lives, a thousand people marching behind them.
Ahead of the march was a single cop car, slowly escorting us along the approved route. I stayed toward the outside of the crowd - sometimes on the sidewalk, sometimes on the street - so that I could have a large bubble of personal space. I stayed silent, for the most part, aware of how projecting your voice puts more viral aerosols into the air around you, but held my hastily scrawled sign up with pride. I was very aware of how little I know about race relations or the police department in Manchester, to give me local context for the experience.
After a loop along the permitted route we returned to the park. As the park filled we moved towards the street to be more visible. I perched myself atop a granite fence post, which allowed me to see over the crowd. The young organizer wondered, into the megaphone, if a single loop was enough, if maybe we needed to do another, but we were only permitted to do one. His voice sounded curious and casual. I wonder what he was thinking in voicing that; I wonder how he felt about the response. From my perspective he remained calm. But in response to the idea that we should march more than we had a permit for, a couple white people started up a chant that raised the anxious energy of the group. I don’t remember the exact words, something along the lines of “It’s not right! Let us go!” I could feel that the potential was there for the energy to build and the crowd to pour into the street, possibly provoking trouble. This wasn’t what the organizer had in mind. “Black Lives Matter,” the organizer called out, trying to regain control over the crowd that was clearly falling into mob mentality. At first, the other cry of impatient anger continued to drown out the organizer. But by the second or third time he called “Black Lives Matter,” I and a few other voices across the park called back “Black Live Matter!” And the crowd quickly shifted to join in, and the energy settled back down.
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| That's me in the pink pants and black shirt. Photo from NHPR. |
This is where my voice matters, I realized. It doesn’t matter who I am or what I’m wearing. What matters is that I listened, that I have trained myself - in this moment at least - to pay more attention to black pain than white anger. It was my job to amplify the voice of this young man when it was being drowned out. That’s what I was there to do, from my granite perch - help maintain the peaceful protest by affirming the leadership of the black organizers over the dangerous entitlement of white anger and anxiety.
While all this was happening, one of the organizers had gone off, likely to converse with the police about the possibility of another loop. After a number of peaceful chants - “No Justice! No Peace!” “This is what democracy looks like!” - she returned, with the information that we could go around the block as long as we stayed on the sidewalk. And so we did, though there was definitely spillover into the street. Again we gathered in the park by the road; again I found myself a granite pillar upon which to perch.
This time, instead of just leading us in chants, the organizers each shared some words, hard to hear across the crowd but from their hearts, expressing their pain and their gratitude and the need for justice and for white people to do more than show up at marches. Between the speakers there would be chanting, and it was often a bit of a challenge for the organizers to regain the attention. One particular moment stands out. A young white man started an anti-cop chant - “All cops are bastards,” perhaps, though I don’t remember for sure. Maybe it was something less insulting of persons and more critical of institutions, such as “No good cops in a racist system!” Regardless, the angry energy rose — or maybe it was just my discomfort? The organizers were trying to give their megaphone to a young woman, but she couldn’t be heard over this chant. I yelled towards the man - “They’re trying to talk!” - but wasn’t heard in the crowd. I tried to start a counter-chant, hoping that might disrupt things enough to hand off to leadership, but no one responded to my “Black Lives Matter!” “She’s trying to talk!” I cried out towards the young man again, hoping that might be heard. Eventually, some folks near him brought it to his attention that it was beyond time to stop his chant so that we could listen to a black woman.
I’m reading that they are starting to attribute a lot of the damage being done in Minneapolis to white supremacist outside agitators. I believe it, and that may be the case there. Later that day two white men were arrested in Manchester on felony riot charges, after they disrupted some Black Lives Matter protestors outside the police station. But to attribute all violence and destruction to either a) the police, b) outside agitators, c) white supremacists, or d) black pain, is a gross oversimplification that denies the responsibility of liberal white folks, the kind of people who would genuinely go to a Black Lives Matter march because we believe that Black Lives Matter. What I observed in Manchester was white participants, quite likely “liberal allies,” pushing the crowd towards chaos, towards violent discord, towards potential confrontation with the police.
If I am going to give people like that white young man the benefit of the doubt, then I might say that it’s not that they have their own axe to grind with the police but that they are so genuinely enraged at the violence being done to protect their privileges that they can’t contain it, that they are so hurt at the loss of black lives that they must scream out. But regardless of their motivations, they put their need to speak, to lead, over the invitation to listen. As a white person I go to a Black Lives Matter march as an act of solidarity. I follow the lead of the black people and do what I can to support and amplify their voices. If my pain and anger still need an outlet, I find it elsewhere. White people have a lot of privilege to feel safe challenging the cops, to insult and belittle them and call it justice. But it is the black protesters who are more likely to get hurt or blamed. So check yourself. What are you fighting for? And listen.
