Day 81 Why Silence Equals Violence; and, Complacency is Complicity

“As protests spread from coast to coast, mayors in more than two dozen cities declared curfews—the first time so many local leaders have simultaneously issued such orders in the face of civic unrest since 1968, after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

1968 was 52 years ago, and while there have been incremental changes in some parts of the country for some persons of color, the predominant narrative is no different now than it was then.

As one protestor said, “I’m not here to fight someone,” said Eldon Gillet, 40, who was on the streets in Brooklyn. “I’m here to fight a system.” Another said, “I’m out here so that my two kids never have to be.”

In “a country already ragged with anger and anxiety,” as one story had it, “With a nation on edge—ravaged by a pandemic, hammered by economic collapse, divided over lockdowns and even face masks, and continuing to be convulsed by racial discord—President Trump’s instinct has been to look for someone to fight.”

The Blamer-in-Chief doesn’t care who he blames, as long as there’s a place to point his accusatory finger. It makes me wonder how the man can look himself in the mirror in the mornings.

“As several cities erupted in street protests, some of which [ended] in clashes with the police, he made no appeal for calm.” Peter Baker named it beautifully, “While other presidents seek to cool the situation in tinderbox moments like this, Mr. Trump plays with matches.”

Consider instead this from Joe Biden. “We are a nation in pain, but we must not allow this pain to destroy us. We are a nation enraged, but we cannot allow our rage to consume us. We are a nation exhausted, but we will not allow our exhaustion to defeat us.”

“Instead, in a series of tweets and comments to reporters on Saturday, [Mr. Trump] blamed Democrats for the unrest, called on ‘Liberal Governors and Mayors’ to get ‘MUCH tougher’ on crowds, threatened to intervene with ‘the unlimited power of our Military’ and suggested that his supporters mount a counterdemonstration.”

Some of them did, and still are. RaHoWa. Ever heard of it? Seen it? I hadn’t. It’s the fondest wish for some of the darkest ideas in the underbelly of America, and stands for Racial Holy War, seen as a welcome outcome by white supremacy groups. Terrifying, no? Much of the destructive behavior has come from these supporters of Trumpism.

There has been a Coronavirus Outbreak news aggregator for months. In the past few days, a new aggregator has arisen: George Floyd Protests.

From Union Square in New York City: “Ainara Gonzalez, a 35-year-old woman from Spain, was one of many white protesters with signs testifying to their solidarity with Black Lives Matter. Hers read, ‘White Silence Is White Violence.’ ‘These killings are a sign of white supremacy and they are enabled by white people staying silent,’ Ms. Gonzalez said. ‘I feel a responsibility coming here because I am white.’”

The violence may be what’s newsworthy, but it was the bleakest end of the spectrum that is meant to challenge the same old, same old, business-as-usual trope of infallible law enforcement. “We have the law on our side.”

The law, Beloved, God love it, is not always right. It’s simply the law. Human law, that is, not Cosmic Law. Cosmic Law is always right—for everyone. That’s what makes it cosmic.

I was struck by police chief after police chief quoted in the media as asking protesters things like, “Is this what we want for our city/town/municipality? We’re better than this.” My overriding feeling in the face of such requests was that the words, coming from where they did, were disingenuous, to say the least, and horrifying, at their worst. Peter Pan does not get to preach the Gospel of Responsibility when he Won’t Grow Up. It matters who’s asking.

The other fact that hit me hard is that mayors from Seattle to Atlanta revealed that the looters who were arrested were not locals. They had come in from outside these cities and towns in order to be violent. For some of our fellow citizens, violence appears to be their solution to what’s happening in our world today.

Violence, Beloved, is never a solution. Attention-getting, yes; a long-term solution, no. Silence, white or otherwise, Beloved, is never, ever a solution either.

Here are some of the quotes that have ricocheted through me in the past two days.

From artist/activist Brad Heckman’s image of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “A riot is the language of the unheard.”

From actor Will Smith, via Instagram, “Racism isn’t getting worse. It’s getting filmed.”

From Tamiesha Parris Flatts, a nurse at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, “When does this stop? How many videos do we need to see? How many?”

From New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, on Amy Cooper’s “shift in the video from indignation to damsel-in-distress inflection, ... ‘It was literally an effort to criminalize being a black man in America.’”

In “Why Amy Cooper’s Use of ‘African-American’ Stung” by Ginia Bellafante, she wrote,  “Ms. Cooper engaged in a calculated act of profiling even as she accommodated the dictates of progressive speech. ... The moment provided a bracing tutorial in what bigotry among the urbane looks like —the raw, virulent prejudice that can exist beneath the varnish of the right credentials, pets, accessories, social affiliations, the coinage absorbed from HBO documentaries and corporate sensitivity seminars. ... The language—‘African-American’—she seemed to have down. It was the deeper impulse for retaliation that she couldn’t suppress.”

Ow.

Again from Mr. Biden: “‘With our complacency, our silence, we are complicit in perpetuating these cycles of violence,’ he said, warning that ‘if we simply allow this wound to scab over once more without treating the underlying injury, we’ll never truly heal.’”

Earlier today, Pope Francis “celebrated a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, in front of a limited number of worshipers following the protocols that are still in effect in Italy and the Vatican. During the homily, he urged Christians to fight three enemies: narcissism, victimhood and pessimism, saying they ‘prevent us from giving ourselves’ in this time of pandemic.”

A slap on His Holiness’ wrist for using the language of violence, namely, enemies. These three are not our enemies, Beloved. They are divine warnings, much like a skunk stamps his feet in a specific warning pattern before spraying.

Narcissism. Victimhood. Pessimism. Darkest darks within each one of us.

Opinion columnist Roger Cohen was so clear. “Trump is a coward.” We cannot allow our own cowardice to hold sway in the face of these darkest of ideas that lurk within all of us. We must bring the night monsters into the light, and befriend them. We must give of ourselves.

Mr. Cohen again: “Trump is a doughnut. There is a hole in the middle of him where honesty, humanity, decency, morality and dignity never formed. He has done incalculable damage.”

And only we can reverse it. The place where true healing begins is always, but always, and forever, within our own hearts. We must begin to explore the answer to the questions that are hovering over us like a cartoon bubble. What do we want for our new normal? What would constitute true healing? How can we make a world that works for everyone? According to cosmic law, not law enforcement.

Playwright Tony Kushner wrote a heart-rending essay about his friend’s recent death. “Larry Kramer Spoke the Truths We Needed to Hear. He showed us that liberation from oppression was a matter of life and death.”

As if that wasn’t clear enough, add this: “Larry also knew what made the wheels of the worlds of art and politics turn, who had called whom to make stuff happen. And he knew who failed to make the wheels turn, who failed tests of chutzpah or moral courage, by which Larry meant voluble outrage. He adored the just and brave and talented, and he adored denouncing those who had failed to act, those who had let us down.”

Moral courage. That’s what each one of us is called to today and every day. “If you see something, say something,” that catchy 9/11 phrase suddenly has a new, and more vibrant meaning, doesn’t it?

“By ‘us,’ Larry meant the L.G.B.T. community. He was an unapologetic tribalist. I often told him that I felt this amounted to a willed limitation of empathy, fatal to the necessity of building solidarity with other communities fighting for justice, enfranchisement, emancipation. He told me that I was too easily distracted and insufficiently loyal to ‘our people.’”

Have we allowed ourselves, in our lethargy, or our apathy, or our overwhelmed-ness, to lapse into a limitation of empathy? Perhaps. And if we have, we may need to grieve it. So be it. But then we must step free of the past to make a new future. We must give of ourselves.

“[Larry’s] focus was so exclusive that it could sometimes feel exclusionary, but the specificity of his vision gave it an astonishing, unsettling, disruptive force. Through his singular devotion to L.G.B.T. liberation, he attained the expression of something like a visionary politics of universal value.”

A visionary politics of universal value. What might that look like in the face of police violence? What might that look like in the face of white supremacy? What might that look like in the face of the theatre of the absurd that our partisan politics have become?

Mr. Kushner again, “With the force of prophetic revelation, the AIDS epidemic laid bare for Larry a terrible, galvanizing truth: Liberation from oppression is, in the most concrete sense, a matter of life and death. Therefore, oppression is as impermissible and intolerable as murder. Oppression is, in fact, murder. To him, any attempt to dodge this truth, or to hide from its imperative for immediate action, was incomprehensible and unforgivable. Comfort with oppression wasn’t bad because it might lead to a holocaust; oppression was the holocaust, and comfort was complicity.”

Liberation from oppression is a matter of life and death.

Oppression is impermissible. Oppression is intolerable. Oppression is murder. Oppression is the holocaust.

We’ve all been touched by oppression to one degree or another, no matter as those oppressed or those oppressing. None of us is immune. What must stop, and stop now, is the weaponizing of oppression. To whatever degree we have witnessed it, we have allowed it, and, Beloved, like it or not, we have all, at the very least, witnessed oppression.

Judy Chicago is the white, Jewish woman artist who created that phenomenal installation known as “The Dinner Party,” which celebrates the contributions of women to the history of the world. She makes a powerful suggestion in “What Does Art Have to Do with the Coronavirus?”

“I am not citing my own art as an egocentric exercise. Rather, I am pointing out that I have been trying to use it to educate, inspire and empower viewers to effect change. Significant change can only occur if we shift our focus to the work of those artists who have had the courage to show us who we are and what we are doing.”

Just like Larry Kramer. “He was demanding not that we submit but that we rise up and begin to take ourselves, our lives, our health and each other as seriously as he did.” 

I’m with Mr. Kramer, may he agitate in peace.

Ms. Chicago, “We must wake up; this pandemic offers us the opportunity to realize that the path we as humans have taken—a path that has rendered our leaders unable to confront, let alone reverse, climate change or to alter the way we treat our fellow creatures—will result in endless havoc. Art matters if artists use their talents to help us find our way.”

And so, Beloved, the next step is up to you and me. What’ll it be? Same old, same old? Might I remind you that complacency is complicity? Or, shall we follow Mr. Kramer’s and Ms. Chicago’s advice and allow our creative artistry to form a new, imperfect union? Regardless, dedicated to the proposition that all [people] are created equal.

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com  

© Dr. Susan Corso 2020 All rights reserved

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