Moving to Baltimore almost 3 months ago, it became a sobering truth that I see every day. Justice, protest, and change, have become used daily in my vocabulary as I have begun to talk about the realities of this world. I'll use a discussion I witnessed in a middle school classroom about the death of Freddie Gray as an example.
To give you a basic overview, 25-year-old Freddie Gray was arrested in the Sandtown neighborhood of Baltimore City, Maryland, on April 12, 2015 after running away from a police presence. We don’t know why he fled, but police say he was arrested once apprehended for possession of a switchblade. He was loaded into a police van, conscious and speaking, and an hour later was taken out of the van in need of immediate medical attention. He arrived at the hospital in critical condition and a week later, on April 19, Gray died of a severe spinal cord injury. While the six police officers went to trial, the family of Freddie Gray received a $6.4 million settlement. By the end of summer 2016 all officers were either acquitted or had their charges dropped. I encourage you to read more about it for a deeper understanding of the case.
This past week I witnessed the question posed to a group of 8th grade Baltimore City students: if you were Freddie Gray’s family would you have taken the money or would you have pushed for justice? The class was about an even split with some of the reasons for taking the money being that for a poor family that money could mean the world: funeral expenses covered, a new home, getting out of poverty. The reasons for justice were that police must be held accountable for their actions, just as much as anyone else. There was no wrong answer in this debate, and I was immensely proud to see those young men and women (because in that moment they were not children, but scholars holding a mature conversation) respond to each other so intellectually, so strongly, and with so much understanding. They know the real world already at 13 and 14 years of age. They know more than even I know sometimes.
I posed also the possibility of using that money for funding social and political activism on racism and police brutality, or starting a scholarship fund in Gray’s name, and therefore not viewing that money as giving up on the issue, but taking it and using it against the injustice it came from.
The other teacher then blew us all away.
With all the police violence and racism in this country, we have yet to set a precedent, he said, that when a police officer kills an innocent black person, or any minority, they go to jail. It’s happening all over the country, and police are not being held accountable, and he used a specific phrase that really stuck with me: It has to start somewhere! Why not here?
It has to start somewhere! Why not here? Why can’t Baltimore be the city that sets the precedent? Why can’t my students be the ones that start the change? All they need to do is begin.
If all adults in this country could hold a debate as maturely and fairly as the one I witnessed, I have no doubt that change would not be such a hard feat to accomplish. But instead, stubborn in our ways and opinions, we cannot seem to see from another’s perspective. And trust me, 6 months ago, I did not have as much insight as I do now, but now my eyes have been opened and I must detail what I’ve seen.
We act like this country is fine. We act- at least many do- like there is nothing wrong with the anger and fear that we let govern how we treat others. A public figure sits during the national anthem as a way to peacefully protest the injustice that still exists here today and the country acts like it’s a slap in the face of what America, its flag, and its anthem stand for, ignoring that one thing it stands for is free speech, its Constitution’s very first amendment.
Every time someone tries to protest or speak out against something they’re treated as a whiner, selfish, uneducated, or what have you, no matter what side they’re coming from. We don’t seem to have the ability to listen to each other. We make excuses. We overlook major violations of morals and laws as “mistakes” and allow rapists to get off with a few months in jail when they should have gotten years.
But we have to start somewhere. Hell, the American Revolution started when an unknown person fired the first shot at the Battle of Lexington and Concord and a skirmish began. We’ll never even know which side that shot came from or who it was aimed at, but one gunshot changed the ENTIRE history of this country. Nowadays we put up with thousands of gunshots with little change, so why can’t we use an unjust death as a starting point for just a conversation?
It’s because of people who think “it’s not like it will change things anyway” that nothing will ever begin for us. There is no hope in anyone’s hearts. If a bunch of dudes had decided that dumping crates of tea into Boston Harbor wouldn’t be effective in sending a message to the British, people would never have begun talking about a revolution in the first place. But they had courage, strength, and perseverance, and did it anyway, regardless of the consequences and whether or not it would work. And it did. The Boston Tea Party is the first thing I remember learning about in US History as a kid; we even performed a play about it in the 5th grade.
Start somewhere. Use your voice. Speak out against the injustices that exist, and don’t be afraid of what others will think. I’m tired of feeling hopeless about change and I’m tired of remaining silent when I see so much going wrong with this country. There is much to speak out against and very little time.
Therefore, I vow, as a future teacher, to educate my students on how to use their voice. I vow to never treat them as less than they are- that is, human beings deserving of a bright future with value in what they have to say and how they feel. I won’t change the world alone, but this is a start.
Why not here? Why not now? Why not you?
