For the past 12 months since Mike Brown was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, our nation has basically been in one long sustained period of protest. Police brutality, violence, and discrimination are far-reaching and have so deeply impacted millions of Americans that silence simple isn't an option. From coast to coast, campus to campus, city to city, protests and marches have been constant for the longest period I can remember in my entire life.
Yet, the refrain I hear far too frequently is, "Protests don't produce change." Technically and practically, this just isn't true. First and foremost, offline protests are a way for people of like minds to join together to express their shared pain and frustration. This solidarity is wildly significant but is too often dismissed, mainly by people who don't protest, because they don't haven't experienced it to understand its value. Online, tens of millions of people are now better connected with one another and with the issues around police brutality in ways that are markedly different than anything we saw in 2013 or earlier. While it's despicable that every person killed by police ends up as a hashtag and trending topic, the reality that people killed by police are often the No. 1 trending topic in the world signifies a sea shift in solidarity and awareness of the issue.
Beyond that, though, a new study by the Associated Press has revealed that practical changes in laws and policies are actually happening everywhere:
Twenty-four states have passed at least 40 new measures addressing such things as officer-worn cameras, training about racial bias, independent investigations when police use force and new limits on the flow of surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.
Despite all that action, far more proposals have stalled or failed, the AP review found. And few states have done anything to change their laws on when police are justified to use deadly force.
Is it enough?
Hell, no.
Has police brutality disappeared?
Of course not.
It's a deep institution and will not even begin a downward trend lightly.
However, changes are happening, and to say otherwise says more about your own ignorance than it does the realities on the ground.
The lid on the jar of police brutality has at least been loosened. It's up to us to take it all the way off in the months ahead.