On this day of Thanksgiving, it may seem paradoxical - even in bad taste perhaps - to talk about the state of our nation. But in doing so, i find a fundamental optimism in our capacity for human kindness and compassion.
There is a great deal of bloodlust in the collective waters of our national consciousness during these contentious days in our fractured country.
There are those who look at U.C. Davis students sitting in a row across a sidewalk being blasted from point blank range with a chemical weapon and quite understandably recoil in horror. Others look at the exact same picture and immediately seek to dismiss the pain received by those kids by tilting towards a more punitive stance of moral relativism: they somehow "deserved it" because they were not compliant with an order to move by a uniformed police officer. Nevermind the obviation of the First Amendment that this response implies. Yet when those virtually identical images are seen in foreign lands, they are often the first to cry out at the injustice and brutality of such behavior.
The first group seeks, somewhat paradoxically, that an immediate (and some have even argued for violent) dispensation of "justice" be meted out upon the police and their superiors in a chain of command. The second group seeks a response from a more doctrinaire "law and order" worldview, looking at the totality of the circumstance by recognizing that the police were following their orders.
Which is "right"? / Which is "wrong"?
In seeking that answer for ourselves lies the conundrum within all of us as to how we view the civic square of our country today.
I have over these last several days advocated amongst friends and family -- and on these very pages -- for a view towards compassion for all those involved. Often I have been accused of being an apologist for one or the other of these varying views of what happened on November 18th on the campus of U.C. Davis. The police clearly thought that they were doing what they had been trained and ordered to do. The students, similarly, were doing what they felt they had to do.
Both were "right". / Both were "wrong".
On the one hand, the police could have chosen to extricate the students one by one - they certainly had the numbers to do so. But instead chose what they identified to be a more expedient path in using a chemical weapon. The students could have chosen to occupy half of the walkway and still made their symbolic point, but instead chose to disobey an order to move when directed to do so. It would not have been injurious to the First Amendment rights of the students nor would it have lost the potency of the action of civil disobedience by moving a few feet to the left or right prior to blocking the pathway.
Both were trapped in a solidified mind of aggression toward the other, unable to see through the fog of that passion any other way around the conflict that ensued.
Both should receive compassion for what transpired, and what they are all living with at this very moment.
In my life, I've been shot with wooden dowels by the Oakland Police Department, beanbagged by Los Angeles Police Department, and beaten by Alameda County Deputies in Santa Rita jail for being in a place and circumstance very similar to the students at U.C. Davis, engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience. In all of these experiences, I chose to put myself in a place where such a potential existed. In none of those instances was I doing something that warranted anything approaching a response of such proportion. Nor were the U.C. Davis students. So I don't excuse or "apologize" for the choice of the U.C. Police in the slightest. I think it was an unfortunate choice. And as I imagine that the the UC Davis students will learn from their run-in, I learned valuable lessons from all of my own experiences - about encounters with unjust authority and about the seemingly limitless extent of human aggression and, yes, compassion.
The behaviour of the students who sat in silence as Linda Katehi (the Chancellor of UCD) left was a clear demonstration of compassion - for those injured, for those doing the injuring, and for the Chancellor herself. Their silent reproach a stunning testimony to the power of nonviolent protest, a mode of communication which at its core is based on a bedrock of compassion. They could have shouted at her, or chosen to surround the building blocking her exit. These responses would likely have escalated the situation further. The students’ quite understandable rage at the injustice and abuse they had suffered and the received police response from that afternoon fueling either one of these actions would have been a repeat of earlier in the day.
But they didn't do that.
Were they "apologists" for the police actions? Were they excusing what happened?
It seems to some I have spoken with that the Chancellor had no empathy for the students being shot with pepper spray because she should have guaranteed they would not be harmed by the police officers on the ground. Implicit in that is an assumption that Chancellor Katehi in fact ordered the police to do exactly what they did -- to direct pepper spray in the faces and mouths and eyes and ears of those young students sitting peaceably on the sidewalk.
In this view, her poor oversight in ensuring the police did not do so therefore means she could not possibly have empathy for the students after watching the video of what happened.
I believe Katehi’s relating of her personal history with authoritarian brutality was an attempt to display, however clumsily it may have been done, the very empathy some have said she lacks. When she was about the same age as these students at UCD, Katehi was attending a university in Athens where 28 students were slaughtered by the barrel of revolver, automatic weapon, and tank. It led to the overthrow of the military dictatorship then ruling her native Greece and the date of November 17th (a date one day before the incident at U.C. Davis) is a national day of mourning to this day.
I understand and respect that this entire situation is enraging, but what does that rage ultimately serve? That righteous anger - no matter how understandable and justifiable given what was (and continues to be) happening to peaceful protesters - has to go somewhere. Righteousness in this manner is in fact another face of aggression. Where do we want it to go? Will it end? And at what cost? Will a trial of the police officers and jail time suffice? Will the Chancellor’s head on a pike in the quad suffice? What about the next time? And the time after that? What about those who break windows and vandalize property? Should that be punished as well? How severely? To what extent? One is violence against a person, the other against another’s property. Both are actions taken under a fever of aggression. Where is the cure?
We live in challenging times, on the knife's edge of unrest seemingly everywhere on this planet. I would suggest that seeing the humanity in other people, however egregiously they have behaved, is the first step towards realizing true justice for those who have received those blows, just as it is a measure of forgiveness for those who have delivered them. Not sweeping it under the rug to just "move forward from here", for all that does is ensure that this sequence of events will continue to happen again and again, and quite potentially with worse outcomes. Accountability needs to happen for these actions. It is also our own personal responsibility to see and empathize with the fundamental humanity in each of us. That is the only way forward for all involved to step gingerly onto a pathway to reconciliation. It will not be easy, or palatable to some. But it must be done.
For until we can see the humanity in those around us, we are destined to continue cycling on this hamster wheel of aggression forever.
The students at U.C. Davis who silently sat down on that pathway along Katehi’s walk to her car appear to understand and embody our human gift for compassion, a potent tool for ending aggression. Reminded of this by those young people’s brave and unifying response to all that transpired, I remain hopeful that our country can find that metaphorical path to sit down upon our own paths in solidarity throughout the times ahead.
On this day of Thanksgiving, may we rejoice in our essential "humanness" and be thankful that we each possess the human ability to act with compassion towards others, no matter how horrible we may perceive their actions to be.
If only we have the courage to choose to do so.
We are, none of us, entirely "right" or "wrong" in most situations in this life. The beauty of looking towards another with compassion is that those qualifiers become utterly irrelevant. When viewed through that lens, all that remains is our humanity and basic human goodness present in every one of us.