Burning Branches - Part 2

It is easier to believe that Baltimore was ‘mindless hooliganism’ rather than a complex response to the oppression we might all share responsibility for.

Of course, the riot was as Obama described created by some ‘criminals and thugs’, not to mention hooligans as intoxicated local sports fans of all races joined in with other opportunists. But there amongst these criminals, hooligans - whatever we choose to name them - are human beings who have been treated unjustly and are burning with rage. How do we respond to these people that we now name criminals? Do we simply lock them away so we can continue doing things as we have always done them?

These ‘hooligans' are our neighbours. As I have been reflecting throughout these weeks - we name people as we know them. Even if we consider these people ‘the least’ of our society, what does that mean? Jesus tells us ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.' (Matt 25:40). The ‘least’ of these who joined in in the riots – whoever they were - the poorly educated, the homeless, the jobless, the poor, the addicts, the youth, the opportunists, the criminals - whatever we call them - why where they there at all?

At least some of these people acted out of rage: for justice for Freddie Gray and for themselves. You may have read that Freddie like others in his area was living on a ‘lead cheque’ this is compensation for lead poisoning that left him and others in his local community unable to lead functional lives. In Freddie’s case, court papers describe a difficult upbringing: a disabled mother addicted to heroin who, in a deposition, said she couldn’t read, and Freddie himself was four grade behind in his reading. This story is not unique. In Sandtown-Winchester where Freddie lived a third of houses in the neighbourhood are abandoned. Local unemployment is over 50% (5.9% is the national average). A quarter of families receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and the median household income for this area is substantially lower than the national average of America, with each home surviving on just $24,000 (£15, 700) yearly.

The centre for Justice Policy reveals that Baltimore saw 145.1 kids out of every thousand citywide arrested between 2005 and 2009. In Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park, that number was 252. A local newspaper points out that means a quarter — one out of four youth — of all 10-to-17-year-olds in Gray's neighbourhood were arrested between 2005-2009. This is not much of a future to aspire to.  

So what is the answer to this group of people who got so fed up with living these lives they decided to set fire to them, and to loot and to steal and to run? How can we respond? Arrest more of them?

Gregory Boyle writes, 'Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgement at how they carry it'. We seek justice, but how do we find justice for everyone, and justice that meets compassion?

I don't carry the same burdens, and so the same rage that many of those 'hooligans' carry. My privilege means that not only will I not be unlikely to be falsely or rightly arrested, not only will I complete a good education, have a job and have enough privilege to help others, not only will I never know what its like to grow up on a street where houses are routinely set alight, not only will I have access to health and legal care that I need, not only will I avoid encountering experience racism in my day-to-day life, not only will I not need to riot to have my voice heard, but when I see these stories on my television or in a newspaper or on the internet, I will have the power to turn them off, to close them down and pretend they don’t affect me.

Of course will also have the power to realize that they do affect me, and that I affect them. I have the power to realize that whist my privilege brings choice, it also brings responsibility. I have lived, and may always live, alongside those who carry burdens that I cannot comprehend. I have the power to let Christ burn down the bad branches in me and allow me to abide in Christ, to find His love and compassion in the midst of violence, and name-calling and fear... dare I respond with compassion?