Large and small matters

A former colleague who still lives in Northampton, Massachusetts texted me yesterday, distraught after reading an article and seeing a video that shows a short, 120-pound Spanish-speaking 60-year-old woman whose only offense was having a broken headlight. The woman was intimidated, abused, handcuffed, pepper-sprayed, and cursed, first by one and then by two physically massive fully-armed policemen. 

Fortunately the woman lived, and she is now filing suit, though I’m sure the trauma is still with her. Meanwhile my friend and others in that community are pressing the city council to replace police with unarmed traffic enforcement personnel who have been trained in de-escalation and who will always know how to reach language interpreters for those who don’t speak English. They may not succeed in convincing the council to make those changes, but at least they are putting the idea out there.

I know it’s important for us to see, to bear witness, and to do all we can to rectify injustice, but I’m not always great at explaining why. So I read books like the ones in this stack. What are the alternatives to policing as we know it in the USA? Why speak about police brutality? Why make photographs of people being threatened and abused by police? Why not find something uplifting instead? I came across a book review by the brilliant Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor that answers those questions. Taylor writes, the “practice of seeing transforms images of pain and degradation into sustenance for the seeing subject.” 

The practice of seeing. Transforms. Images. Into sustenance. 

She’s reviewing a book that examines “the centrality of disappointment in American political life," and the idea that disappointment is not a bad thing. I think I’ll have to read the book. I understand how disappointment pulls us “toward the continuity of desire for change.” For years I’ve been acting on that knowledge. However I stumble when it comes to articulating why.

Meanwhile, back inside my physical head as opposed to my thoughts, the virus has created an environment in which bacteria have started to grow and multiply in my sinuses. I thought I was recovering and then took a dive, so I am once again on antibiotics and thankful for them. I’d have been dead at the age of six without them, but here I am, 72 years later, still getting sick and taking antibiotics so I can continue the practice of seeing and loving others who are disappointed by racism, policing, wealth hoarding, and a failure to address climate change.

Apologies for the poor photograph. I'm not well enough to do more today.