Friends,
At the end of June I wrote in this column about the positive experience I had walking thought East Oakland with an ecumenical group of people who long for peace and economic prosperity in our city’s poorest neighborhoods. The walk symbolized our commitment to build relationships with and to work alongside our neighbors who live in Oakland’s lower elevations.
I’ll be heading back down to the East Oakland this Friday evening to walk again and this time the walk will take on more urgency. In June I had never heard of Ferguson, Missouri. I knew about police brutality, I knew about economic inequality, and I knew about media double standards when talking about race. The murder of Trayvon Martin had a profound impact on me, and because I spent the last ten years living in an economically-disadvantaged predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in San Jose, I had–perhaps more than most White America Males–a sense for the ways people in communities of color are excluded from the American dream.
But Ferguson has changed things for me. I was not prepared to see a militarized police force gas, harass, and arrest members of the press. It turns out we live in a nation where pointing a camera in the general direction of economic and social injustice–thought not a crime–can get you arrested, and when journalists no longer are free to visit and report upon disadvantaged communities, it becomes our responsibility to go see for ourselves. This is not to say that I expect to walk through a riot, but if the unrest manifest in Ferguson spreads to Oakland, I want to be able to say that the people most profoundly affected are people with whom I have walked, with whom I’ve shared a neighborly conversation, and with whom I have worked for our city’s common good.
I hope you will join me in the walk.
God’s Peace,
Ben