Friends have asked me what I think about the protests and riots. My in-laws have tried to bring it up, express their support and I changed the subject. It’s not because I didn’t want to have an uncomfortable conversation, it’s that I hadn’t yet figured out how I felt. Until the riots reached Seattle.
I couldn’t sweep away this swell in my chest, this silent, simmering undercurrent of ambiguous emotions anymore. I thought about my mother and realized I understood her a lot more than I used to.
You see, my mother is from Nicaragua. She was a teenager during the Iran-Contra affair and I knew she wanted to pick up a rifle and join the fight. I was around eighteen when I heard that story and logged it away as a fun anecdote to tell at parties about how fierce and amazing she is.
The truth is so much deeper and I’m embarrassed that I took it so lightly. When I sat down to consider how she must have felt, I found the name for what I felt. A call to action. The desire to be part of an effort that could bring about profound change.
But I can’t be.
I hesitate, and that hesitation fills me with this gnawing sense of hypocrisy. Not only do I sympathize with the injustices I have borne witness to, I’ve experienced them first-hand.
I have had multiple police officers train their guns on me as a teenager. I’ve been followed or kicked out of stores by security. I’ve been jailed multiple times for forgetting to pay a ticket, while one of my in-laws was sent home in an Uber after he drove his car, shitfaced, into a lake. No charges. I’ve been harassed and threatened by a white cop for crossing a crosswalk on an empty street because the walk signal wasn’t lit up yet. I’ve had two DUIs while several white friends bragged to me about getting pulled over drunk several times and seeing zero consequences for it. I was pulled over driving my brother’s lowered truck because he didn’t change both license plates when he got new ones. They cuffed me, searched my car for drugs while simultaneously yelling at me about where they are. They had no probable cause and when they didn’t find any drugs, the jailed me anyway for not having paid a seatbelt ticket. I did not match any descriptions or reports, I was just a brown kid in a lowered pickup truck. I was never given the benefit of the doubt. No. Instead, they called the K9 unit, because the reason of negligence on my brother’s part wasn’t believable enough for me. But my white friend has the cops call someone to drive him home for the same offense. They didn’t impound his car. Guess how many times I’ve had to pay to get my car out of the impound?
When I saw the anger boil over into violence, I understood. For every Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Philando Castille, George Floyd, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, and the endless others, I feel the ember of fury build pressure within me begging for release. I want to scream, march, shout, pump my fist into the air with everyone else.
But I must stay home.
I’m on year four of a five-year deferment process for my last DUI. Those who follow me know I recently hit my five-year sobriety mark. If I go to a protest, and police instigate and I get arrested, not only will I face the legal consequences of that arrest but I risk the failure to meet the conditions of my deferment and I’m looking at a second DUI offense with a refusal to blow. My anger needs a release valve but my young children and my wife need me more.
Faced with the frustration of not being able to do what I want, I must do what I can. I can share my pain and anger at our broken system. I can show solidarity with those risking themselves on the line to put flame under the feet of those in power. The power structures built on the history of genocide and slavery have held their knee on our necks for long enough. If it takes burning down a Target, or the smoldering carcass of a police cruiser to finally be taken seriously, so be it. I hope the protests continue, I hope our voices rise loud enough to deafen those who would seek to silence us and the momentum carries us to actionable change. I can’t march, but I can write.
Black Lives Matter.