I'm sick of reading this quote, from Thomas Jefferson.
"... I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Paris, January 30, 1787
The context when I read this quote online, on Facebook, posted by some hipster stranger or goofy friend of mine, is that some kind of armed revolution is a 'needed' thing now and again, and is a good, necessary thing. But whenever I read this quote, I remember, and realize how little so many of us know or care to know. That Jefferson was speaking about the danger of Monarchy, about the danger of revolutionary movements that entrench disenfranchisement and the abolition of rights, and was (in his way) talking about the civic good of free elections that upturn the people running civil institutions is just lost.
Because when we resort to arms and violence, when we see our brothers and sisters so helpless that the only thing they can do is express rage, that's not a thing to shirk off, shrug away, or assume is right and natural. It represents a failure of civic institutions, of a system that's let people down. No one should applaud a riot. Neither should they condemn it if there is a political context to it.
We have the easiest mechanism for regular revolution in this country, it happens every year in November. In some places in the country, it happens at other times, but we don't exercise it enough. We complain about it. We skip it. We say, "But I go," as if that is enough, when our friends and family and neighbors skip it.
That simple act, when taken in whole, is so powerful it's the thing that people with money are undermining. Ferguson is what happens when a system continues to elect people who support institutionalized racism. That support is overt, in the election of people like Bob McCulloch. And it's covert, in the people who tell themselves, "All politicians are the same," and look for their escape hatch, and skip voting when they still have the right.
And the people left behind, left in charge, perpetuate these destructive policies. And people die as a result of them.
Ferguson will be spoken about in a context larger than the property damage that is happening now, as if the property damage is the worst thing to happen, as if a body left in the street for four hours in the Southern sun is something best forgotten, as if that is a normal state of affairs.
Devoid of political context, we accept the large violence of a baseball game riot in October. But take that act, put a political context on the violence, especially one that shakes up the status quo, and people are made uneasy. In that context, San Francisco in October of this year when the Giants won the series was a bigger story. But Ferguson will be the bigger story, because with its political context there is no denying the failure of our civic institutions, of our politics, of our collective good will and judgement.
We do need a revolution, but it's one of conscience and civics. That's the change we need to bring, and cajole, and make happen.
I don't know if we will. The world won't get better by wishing it. It only gets better when you will it.