Watching videos of the Minneapolis protesters this week, bundled in ski garb, down coats and balaclavas, has me thinking metaphors. They are in a deep freezer, their red-hot anger packaged in cellophane.
Because my own nose hairs freeze when I walk between back door and garage here in Illinois, I am with them. Because my conversations with friends here are full of that red-hot anger, I can identify.
You don’t have to be politics-obsessed to share in this emotional moment. We are all human. We are watching our fellow-humans violently treated. We know from experience that it doesn’t have to be this way. We have lived in an America that made logical, legal sense most of the time.
Cozied up to my fireplace, I am reading Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America, by John Lewis. Lewis lived out the protests in the 1960’s alongside Dr. King. They received violent treatment from armed government agents. Like the tens of thousands in Minneapolis, his protesters were peaceful. While the authorities provoked and insulted them, they maintained the moral fortitude to sustain an attitude of love: a deeply-held belief that those provokers were just as human as the rest of us. The violent provokers were caught up in a false belief that they were somehow more human than their victims.
By standing up for their own humanity, the midcentury protesters were demonstrating that we are all human, all worthy of decency. That is exactly what the Minneapolis protesters want to convey.
I want to say to the ICE agents, “Back off with your red-hot hatred. We see that you are a front of bravado that has lost your sense of proportion. You are just one of us, no better, and inside, no less. The deep-freeze weather will break. If you could thaw the deep-freeze in your heart, you, too, could feel the relief that follows.”
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