I cant even watch the film of Eric Garner dying. Ive made myself do so, twice, so I could judge for myself and make sure I wasnt over-reacting. Im not over-reacting. No one who is sickened by this is over-reacting. Were hearing him die. Put in an illegal chokehold for selling loose cigarettes - a petty crime. A black man, who was angry and frustrated for being treated like a dangerous criminal, whod probably been treated that way much of his life, and was just sick and tired of it. So he wasnt a model citizen. He was a husband and father of six children, obviously trying to get by. Meanwhile, the men on Wall St who stole our retirements, paid themselves hundreds of millions of dollars for doing so, and have turned around to heavily pressure politicians to gut the safety net because we cant afford it remain free. These are people who have deeply harmed millions of US citizens, people who have profoundly harmed this nation. And they pat themselves on the back and chortle, surely, at our stupidity. This majority white grand jury took it even a step further, not only absolving Officer Pantaleo of any responsibility for what was ruled a homicide, but instead indicted the friend who filmed the entire, horrifying incident. Im trying to grasp this. Every single day in this nation justice IS served, when judges and juries and lawyers do the right thing. Conscience still abounds, in every nook and corner, across the wide swaths of our lives. But threaded through, and underlying our most fundamental systems (economic, legal, political) is an increasing level of toxicity, power abuses, distortion, and the total perversion of what is utterly requisite to their proper functioning: integrity. Integrity of the law, integrity of economic theory, analysis and action, integrity of the political exchange. In a world where obscene wealth is celebrated as both desirable and somehow honorable, no matter how ill-begotten; in a world of post 9/11 Executive and Congressional (and military) power to subvert and re-make the rule of law for the sake of expediency; in a nation that sits mutely by while the game is rigged entirely to favor the super rich, at the expense of the rest of us and of the planet itself, we will lose our ability to know, embody and judge - integrity. In this world, integrity is quaint. It is the dream of a bygone era, the stuff of romantics and activists without power. It is perceived as a weakness, and something to privately ridicule. But the functioning of the rule of law, of our justice system, requires that its levers turn on the most fundamental adherence to basic integrity. The Western rule of law, by and far one of the most successful and, yes, still viable organizing systems for human beings to co-exist side by side, is not in and of itself a moral system. It cannot be, for morality shifts with the times and the rule of law must transcend trends. But it IS dependent upon an invisible, animating principle, that adherence to ineffable integrity, as the very bulwark against its own perversion, its destruction of true accountability, its inversion of justice and truth for the morbidly unjust, for the invidiously, not benignly, untrue. In our pandering to unchecked greed; in our turning our backs on politicians who manipulated us into supporting a war based on lies and its irrevocable consequences, in our strongly American need to avert our eyes from our nations shadow, our own shadows within it, we become culpable, susceptible, easy-to-manipulate in our exhaustion and defensiveness. And so, Fox News commentators can say without shame I hope New York will be ok, after the announcement of the grand jury decision, and those same Fox News pundits can again, without shame or any visible expression of conscience, worry about the legacy of Bill Cosby more than the lives of the great number of women he raped, and all of our mainstream media can barely contain their sniggers of condescension for the activists out in our streets, demanding justice for a man who was needlessly, wrongfully murdered - rather than dare bring up the question of accountability in our justice systems - especially for black men - these things become the norm, and those who protest sick norms are made fun of, disregarded, reflexively marginalized. That is so much easier than looking within. So much easier than challenging the corporation one works for - especially with rampant job insecurity. It is so much easier to focus on Eric Garners spotty past and on those weird activists, than it is to tell hard truths - about what weve all become. So I will force myself to watch Eric Garner dying, as tribute to him, as tribute to all wrongfully hurt black men and women, and as tribute to the truths our nation is rabidly avoiding. I will not avert my eyes, nor will I remain silent, in order to fit in to a world that has so profoundly been turning its back on the most fundamental sort of truth and integrity - the kind that make us function, as human beings, as societies. I will carry the banner for you, Chelsea Manning, Aaron Schwartz, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and all who needed and need us to do far, far better, as a nation, as a world and people. For we are in this together, and we must fight to reclaim what makes us human. I will carry the torch. I will walk behind you. I will not stop singing the songs that mean our freedom, the songs of nonviolent revolution. I will stand up to arrogance and rampant greed, to the inversion of so many critical things. I will toe the line to no party, no label, no person, no ideology, save for this unquenchable belief that we can and must do better than this and the absolute knowledge that it is up to each and every of us.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 23:24:45 +0000
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