What do Little Caesar’s Pizza, Auto Zone, Public Storage, Smart and Final, Starbuck’s, and a local meat market have in common? All are owned and run by individuals and families, not huge corporations. None of those owners served on the Darren Wilson grand jury or ever met Michael Brown. None of them has any power to direct legal events or change laws on their own. Yet they’ve been attacked, the targets of protesters who carry signs such as the one reading IMAGINE JUSTICE. Their livelihoods, just as the shopping season most important to the welfare of their families, have been taken away by fire, looting, and vandalism.
Granted, some of the protesters are peaceful and respecting of other people’s lives and property. It’s the ones who set fires, shoot off guns that cause air traffic to be diverted, set fire to buildings and cars, and loot–they are the problem. It’s the ones who came not to protest a cause but to cause trouble who are the problem. (If those defacing property with graffiti were simply caught up in the moment, how is it that they thought to bring spray paint with them?)
Michael’s grieving mom is right when she asks for activities that will “make a positive change.” That’s not what’s happening in Ferguson, Oakland, New York, Denver, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and elsewhere in our peace-loving country. We need to stop the violence and put all that energy into changing people’s racial attitudes, promoting laws and policies that are fair and humane to all, and, quite frankly, learning to abide by a dictate that appears in all major religious books. We call it the “Golden Rule.”
