anemic accountability and believing in the unseen
anemic accountability and believing in the unseen
April 2021
Derek Chauvin is guilty. It took the whole world watching for that to be true in the eyes of the law. There was no teenager with a camera the night cops shot Breonna Taylor in her apartment. The LMPD incident report from March 13, 2020, says "injuries: none."
Two of the three cops who fired into her apartment and the apartments of her neighbors were found not guilty of committing a crime. One officer was charged with wanton endangerment for shooting into walls / missing people. Who killed Breonna Taylor? The injustice system says no one did.
Someone somewhere is investigating but I have lost track of who and what. Our local paper, The Courier Journal, has a weekly newsletter with updates on "The Breonna Taylor Case."
Black women killed by the police become cases. Black women are expected to be something other than walking basket cases, wondering when they will be next.
The names come too quickly. Adam Toledo, Daunte Wright, Ma'Khia Bryant.
My youngest son shaved for the first time this week. Between Daunte and Ma'Khia. His body betraying his boyhood. He's taller than me. His locs hang in front of his eyes. His pants stop short of his ankles.
My youngest daughter is mistaken for being older than her eight young years. She is taller than her older sister. I lament my babies growing up. Most moms do. But whiteness doesn't allow Black babies to become Black kids. In the eyes of whiteness, Black boys and girls are threats to be feared. Making lethal force legal.
It gives me no comfort to know that if a cop kills my child they might be convicted of their crime.
Around 1,000 people are shot and killed each year by the police in the United States. Fewer than 2% are arrested or charged, and, since the beginning of 2005, only 35 have been convicted.
People are calling Derek Chauvin's conviction accountability. I think we have an anemic understanding of accountability.
Danielle Sered, Executive Director of Common Justice, an organization dedicated to developing and advancing solutions to violence that transform the lives of those harmed without relying on incarceration, says:
Accountability requires five key elements: (1) acknowledging responsibility for one’s actions; (2) acknowledging the impact of one’s actions on others; (3) expressing genuine remorse; (4) taking actions to repair the harm to the degree possible, and guided when feasible by the people harmed, or “doing sorry”; and (5) no longer committing similar harm.
Prisons do not provide transformation or safety. By their very nature, they cannot. Removing the perpetrator of harm from the community may seem like a logical step, but it removes any possibility for the accountability outlined above. Not to mention it certainly won't be safe for the Black men Chauvin will be imprisoned with. As of 2018, Black Americans represented 33% of the sentenced prison population, nearly triple their 12% share of the adult population.
Derek Chauvin is the product of white supremacy, toxic masculinity, and the culture of American policing. He has been (mis)shaped and (mal)formed for decades. Prison will not undo this trauma—only exasperate it and radicalize him further. (Whiteness is trauma for white folks and everybody else. See: My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menekam. Toxic masculinity is trauma for men in addition to everybody else. I don't have a book to prove this—it's my lived experience.)
What does it say about us that the best we've got for humans who cause harm is to cage them? To harm them in return? How is it Christians cannot fathom a world without punishment or policing?
Our imagination allows for immaculate conception, God putting on human flesh, water-turned-wine, multiplying bread and fish, raising of dead people, walking on water, resurrection, and ascending to an afterlife of eternal peace... and yet we cannot imagine another way forward here and now, in the face of the crushing and caging of image-bearers?
I don't buy it.
Perhaps we have lost our prophetic imaginations and perhaps those of us with power and capital are happy to trade their protection for the hunting, caging, and execution of our Black siblings. Perhaps our willful ignorance to the historical, intergenerational pain of this world and the vastness of God’s love allows us to call caged image bearers accountable.
We are profoundly off track of the way of Jesus.
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I'm weary. You might have noticed. I find hope in action and the past two weeks have overdone it. I lurch between lamenting how little change I am likely to see in my lifetime, feeling energized by the organizing work I'm part of here in Louisville, and a raging desire to burn everything to the ground.
My friend and podcast co-host Kayla Craig shared earlier this week that she knows my words will kick her ass and she knows it's an ass-kicking of love. I hope you know that too. I write because I believe, somewhere deep I can't root out (despite sometimes wondering if it might make life easier), that ushering in a more livable planet for the most marginalized is not only possible but best for us all.
I write it because I believe it and I believe it because I've experienced it. And I want the heaven on earth I've glimpsed for everyone.
I know imagining a world where everyone has what they need to thrive is a lot. I know it feels impossible that we can live together without harm, without punishment. I struggle to believe in the unseen too. But if Christians don’t believe God's dream of shalom can be real, what do we believe in?
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This month's recs* are designed to free your imaginations, move us closer to something that feels like shalom, and to acknowledge another way is possible if we are willing to struggle for it.
I’d love to hear what questions come to mind as you read/listen. What apprehensions do you have about a police-free world? What would help you reimagine the way we live together? What does it look like in your community for everyone to have everything they need to thrive?
*Because they are topic-specific, some are repeats from previous months. Please add other resources to the comments!
Book Recs
The End of Policing by Alex Vitale (ebook is currently FREE!)
Until We Reckon Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair by Danielle Sered
We Do This ‘Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba
Becoming Abolitionist by Derecka Purnell (available for pre-order)
Pod Recs
Actions
Does your city or state grant special protection to police who commit misconduct? Go here to find out.
What is your city’s police budget? What % of the overall budget does policing and incarceration represent? In what neighborhoods are these policing dollars spent? Who benefits from this? Who is harmed by it?
What non-police resources exist in your community? Go here to find out. (And create a list if one doesn’t exist where you live!)
Get to know your neighbors. The number one ingredient for a world without harm is genuine reciprocal relationships.