kNOw Justice, kNOw Peace

I have a sign in my yard. It reads "kNOwJUSTICE, kNOwPEACE."

My children and I painted it last year after news broke that a police
officer had kneeled on a Black man's neck for an excruciating nine
minutes until he died.

The kids added BLM and a drawing of a heart to my handiwork.

During the past 11 months, there's been a lot of honking past our
house. Some of it accompanied by cheers, but much more, sadly, the
noise of jeers, or a forceful middle finger, or the occasional tossing
of rubbish.

Despite the uproar ... and the anonymous complaint to code enforcement
over whether a person with such a sign in a town such as ours has the
right to display "matters of politics," since there are rules
regulating the presence and placement of political signage during
election season ...
our sign stayed.

When it got egged, I cleaned it.
When it was tipped over, I righted it.

I'm not taking it down.

Even after my phone erupted with good vibrations last Tuesday after
the Verdict was read ...

"Guilty, Guilty, Guilty."

The moment - while triumphant right now - will pass.

I wanted to feel elation at the verdict. It was clear and correct, and
it was necessary, but whether it is a turning point for this country
seems unlikely.

Given the facts of the case -- the video evidence and heartbreaking
testimony of eyewitnesses, some of whom were children -- it seems
almost impossible for a jury to come up with any other decision.

And yet they have and regularly do; hamstrung, many say, by laws or
policy that give police an almost uncheckable power.

In the time it took to convict a remorselessly murderous cop, at least
two more police shootings of Black children hit the news cycle. Two
more chances for other citizens to argue about the permissibility of
discounting their lives.

It seems painfully clear that without the courage of a 17-year-old
girl who filmed the murder of George Floyd, this trial may never have
taken place. Similarly, as the verdict was read we learn that states
all over this nation are turning their legislative work NOT toward
fair and equitable policing BUT to further restrict citizens' rights
to gather in protest.

We have much work to do as a country. No one action will bring about a
solution to our many problems as a nation, but there are things we can
and must do to ensure an equitable future for us all.

Perhaps even more so than training, we must work to rid police ranks
of dangerous cops. That "One Bad Apple," saying has a literal ending
we ignore to our peril; "spoils the bunch."

And we in the media have our part to play, too. We have to reevaluate
our reliance on police as primary sources of information.

I wish I could impress upon you the benefits we all would gain by
having a policing system that is more compassionate and professional,
one that humanizes suspects, and one that is accountable and
responsive to its own failures.

I wish we all could know, without question or fear, that reform is not
only necessary it's a moral imperative.