Above photo: In this Aug. 13 file photo, a man watches as police walk through a cloud of smoke during a clash with protesters in Ferguson, Mo. Recent events in Ferguson have raised nagging questions about police tactics and race relations in the United States. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)
Us against Them. That’s what Tom Loewy sees when he looks at the pictures from Ferguson.
A few years ago I sat at a picnic table in Kiwanis Park and spoke with a young man.
Every time I see a picture from Ferguson, Missouri, I think of that young man. And our conversation.
He was 27 years old and living in Galesburg after a lifetime spent in the south Chicago neighborhood known as Englewood. He said he liked the fresh air and quiet of Galesburg.
“And the lack of gunshots,” he said. “That’s always nice — when bullets ain’t flying’ past your head while you’re trying to do homework.”
I didn’t have to ask the young man many questions. We were just sittin’ shootin’ it.
“Where I come from the police start in on you when you about 10 — big enough to be out runnin’ by yourself,” he said. “And they weren’t mean or nothin’. They ask you question like if you play sports or they tell you to stay straight.
“But that all change when you 12 or 13 or 14. My first was I was runnin’ with a friend. We were just runnin’ to run, you know? We runnin’ and the police stopped us and searched us and asked us why we was runnin’.
“From then on, that how it be. You get trained up for Us against Them. And it gets to the point where you don’t even think about it. That the way it is and you get to where you don’t ever remember a time when it wasn’t.”
Us against Them.
That’s what I see when I look at the pictures from Ferguson. I don’t care if the shooting of Michael Brown was justified or not. I just don’t care.
We are all human beings. All of us are ruled by passions and capable of misunderstandings. All of us make mistakes. We see things through frames of reference of which we ourselves aren’t always aware.
Let’s grant a moment of grace and the highly unlikely supposition that the shooting of Michael Brown had nothing to do with the color of his skin or the kind of clothes he wore or the neighborhood in which he lived.
Let’s set aside the framework of the shooting deaths of all the other black males we read about all the time. Let’s set aside history and all we deny about the apartheid state in which many men and women of color live.
Let’s talk about Us against Them. Let’s talk about a phalanx of heavily armed and armored police officers moving through streets.
Let us, just once, talk about the terrifying pictures we saw from Ferguson over the course of the last week.
“Thing I know now, from livin’ in this place, is that it makes you sad. And it makes you angry. You just become sad and angry and you front like it’s OK, but inside you it really ain’t.”
One summer while painting dorm rooms on a college campus I found a book on the criminal justice system. And I’ll never forget reading a line that said, essentially, democracy is doomed when the civilian police closely align themselves with an authoritarian structure or private interests. The police, in essence, will become shock troops for the powerful.
That’s what we saw in Ferguson. And we see it all over the country. When masses of brown people or poor people or people with no power rise in anger, we see men in riot gear. We see pepper spray. We hear angry voices demanding the innocent to put their hands up.
A number of people on Facebook commented we are lucky to never see a militarized police in Galesburg.
There is, I think, a reason for that good fortune.
The police in our community are part of the community. They may dislike criminals or go hard on some individuals, but I don’t believe they see themselves as an outside force. They have family and friends and neighbors in this town.
On some level, the police here — and most all across this country — recognize the humanity of their fellow citizens. I wonder what would have happened if, in the wake of Michael Brown’s shooting, people reached out to one another. If people talked. If people embraced their shared humanity and one another as members of a community, each deserving understanding. Each deserving justice.
Suddenly I’m back at that Kiwanis Park picnic table. Around the way, some little kids ran under the rainbow sprinkler and squealed with that almost-cartoon kid delight.
I asked my 27-year-old acquaintance if there could ever be a time when he didn’t live in Us against Them.
He shrugged.
“Naw. Not for me,” he said. “I’m too old to see it for me. I keep my head down here and I’m good.”
Then he pointed at the kids runnin’ in the sprinkler.
“But for the shorties, maybe,” he said. “It would have to start with them. The world can be better for them.”
I look at the pictures from Ferguson and cling to the hope he is right.