Use Your Voice: Ferguson and Our Future

What happens when the stimulus doesn't match the response? What happens when the punishment doesn't fit the crime? Could it be that we don't have the right information, or that we don't know the whole story, or that we are blinded by the narrowness of our own experiences?

Many Americans think that Officer Wilson deserved punishment of some sort for taking Michael Brown's life. Many Americans think that Michael Brown deserved punishment for stealing cigarillos and assaulting an officer of the law. Many Americans think that rioting and raging is the appropriate response to their perceived injustice. Many others think that the only meaningful and effective response is peaceful demonstrations and discussions. Still others think that there is nothing at all to talk about.

No matter where you land in this spectrum, it is undeniable that there is unrest in America today, and that unrest is about much, much more than the rounds that one white police officer pumped into one black man on one August afternoon. Ferguson has only pulled back the curtains on the tensions that have existed in America for years.

The truth is that this is our inheritance. We aren't responsible for the sins of our fathers, no we aren't. But we are reaping the harvest of what our fathers have sown. Strange fruit has withered and died and fallen from many trees into the soil of our society, where its seeds have taken root and grown into new trees, bearing a different kind of fruit that is no less deadly but is, alarmingly, much less visible to the dominant culture.

So what can we do? What can we do in the face of such longstanding, deep-seated tension? What do we do with this harvest of Distrust, Prejudice, Misunderstanding, Confusion, Fear, and (at best) Voluntary Segregation?


I don't know. I don't have a pat answer for you. Because I'm not YOU. I'm me -- with my own life experiences, my own history, my own family, my own neighborhood, my own job and coworkers, my own roommates and friends, my own fiancé, my own church, my own grocery store, my own positions of influence and power, my own story. But this much is true: Each person can only lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him. God has established and instituted our authorities. Our hearts make plans, but each of our steps must be brought forth by the Lord. And although we may not hold the position in our culture that we desire, we know that God's grace toward us to give us the life that He has chosen for us is not in VAIN, but is to demonstrate His wisdom and power. By the grace of God, I am what I am.

So what can we do? Each of us, in whatever circumstances the Lord has placed us, can take steps each day to tear down the wall of hostility. I'm in my neighborhood, you are in yours. But we will face different moments of decision each day, moments where we can deny our prejudicial inklings; where we can stand up for the cause of justice; where we can refuse to comply with our dominant culture's practices of apathy, indecision, and passive, tacit approval of the status quo. These are moments where we can willfully step outside of our own perspectives, where we can ask questions and engage in conversations with people we normally wouldn't, so that we can become students of what the American experience truly is. These are moments when we can kindly confront someone who is spewing vitriol and senseless hatred and urge them to pursue the path of love and peace. These are moments when you can use your voice -- the voice that the Lord ordained for you to have, for the people the Lord ordained to hear it -- to stand on the side of Justice and Righteousness. Speak for truth. Speak for love.

But the one thing we cannot do -- the one thing that will absolutely, without question, irrevocably cause the most damage -- is to do nothing. To sit idly by while hatred and injustice and division wins. To apathetically let the moment pass us by, to forget about the the seeds that are being planted, to ignore the harvest that will be coming.

America, the trigger has been pulled. We have been asked to see, to learn, to seek to understand, and to change.

How will you respond?



Hate evil, love good, 
and establish Justice in the gate. 
Let Justice roll down like waters, 
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. 

Let it roll.

oh, louisville. now you've got me good and mad ....

so the week i moved in to my apartment just happened to be the same weekend of the St. James Art Fair. yes, for one whole weekend, thursday through sunday, our friendly neighborhood LMPD (louisville metro police department) blocks off several city blocks in the middle of old louisville (just south of downtown). there's a giant art festival, and vendors set up tents all along the streets that have been blocked off.

yes, right in front of HUNdreds of apartment buildings.

of course, my street was not blocked, but parking was prohibited. which means essentially the same thing.


but louisville, i forgave you for that. it was a small area, it was a long-standing tradition, it didn't make traffic bad, it just made it very difficult to find parking at my house where i LIVE. and you gave me a really shady ticket, which i never paid after mulitple attempts at logging the ticket number in online failed.

but tonight .... tonight, louisville, i think you and i are through with the niceties. you have put the nail in your coffin.

because of thunder.

that's right: thunder over louisville.


i just spent ALL day getting ready for and playing in and celebrating the wedding of some good friends. at 10 pm, i get in my car and drive two hours to louisville. thunder has been over for awhile. the bridge is no longer blocked. so i proceed on my merry way, seeing the northbound lanes full of traffic but my southbound lane wide open. i see my exit. it's not full of cars. i pull into the exit lane.

BLOCKED. by a police SUV.

so i decide to take the next available exit. which is, of course, in the middle of a dense traffic jam.

i get off the exit, but all streets which normally go two ways are now ALL one-way southbound. since my FIRST exit, NORTH of my house, was blocked, i now am SOUTH of my house and i need to travel NORTH.

THERE ARE NO NORTHBOUND STREETS OPEN.

NONE.

after making a HUGE circle all the way around three sides of my block, and seeing my starbucks, i finally begin to make some progress up 4th street.

a mere 5 blocks up, it's blocked off.

i ask a nearby policeman if there are ANY northbound streets.

"no."

"so you're telling me there's NO WAY for me to get to my house at 4th and hill?"

"nope."

"for the next hour and a half?"

"yep."

wow. thanks for the help, you civil servant you.

then i hear something on his walkie talkie about some street being opened up for northbound traffic. i wait for him to inform me of this .... he just stares.


thunder over louisville has ushered in something new: my RAGE over louisville.

i would put MONEY on the fact that a good 1/3 of the cars stuck in traffic were meandering aimlessly (at a ridiculously slow pace) on roads they DIDN'T need to be congesting further just because all the roads were either blocked entirely or had become one-way southbound. if the roads had been allowed to keep their normal purpose, the people who were trying to leave downtown would be stuck in traffic. the people who had CHOSEN to go to the event would be reaping the consequences. instead, i sat in traffic for over an hour, i THINK i got rear-ended when i was trying to cross a street w/ no light and no traffic director and endless cross-traffic and a car behind me beeping endlessly, i couldn't find a parking spot by my house, and i had to carry my violin, guitar, and luggage from this weekend two blocks to my house. and i didn't even get to GO TO THUNDER IN THE FIRST PLACE.


i have NEVER in all my life seen a city handle such an event and such a traffic situation with such profound stupidity. not one bit of it made sense. unnecessary blockages and very confusing re-routing.

SOMEone, in SOME government office in louisville, IS going to have to deal with me and all my wrath. there is just no reason that thousands of people should be completely blocked from getting to THEIR OWN HOUSES. no reason whatsoever.