Source: Religion News Service | Jonathan Merritt
The quickest way to a person’s heart is often through their ears.
This is a good lesson for a columnist like myself, who is rarely short on words, in the wake of a tragedy like the Eric Garner decision. I started searching for the right words since it was announced that the police offer who choked Garner to death would not be indicted. “Just wait a few days,” I told myself Wednesday night, “and the words will eventually come.” Well it’s Friday, and my dictionary’s pages are still blank.
In one sense, I don’t have to speak in such a moment because Garner has already said enough. His final pleas fell on the deaf ears of those who claimed to be his protectors: “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”
But perhaps this isn’t the time for me–and other white Christians–to speak. Maybe we should listen instead. To people of color. To our brothers and sisters. To those who’ve been trying to tell us that there is a problem in this country. To those who know what it feels like to be Eric Garner. To those who know what it means to be black. That’s why I reached out to a few friends whose voices need to be listened to.
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Lisa Sharon Harper | Senior Director of Mobilizing for Sojourners and co-author of “Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith”
The morning after George Zimmerman was acquitted I woke up in tears. It was striking to me that because of the proliferation of Stand Your Ground laws across our nation, and the way they are embedded in jury instructions now, we are living in a pre-1964 Civil Rights Act world—a world where legal loopholes allow inequitable racialized outcomes—outcomes that allow black lives bearing the image of God to be crushed without recourse. I woke up in tears that morning. That was a year and a half ago.
When Eric Garner died I wept, but hoped he would receive justice. It was on tape, after all, and New York is not a Stand Your Ground state. When John Crawford III died, I wept, but I had hope because Ohio is not a Stand Your Ground state. When Michael Brown died, I wept and then I could not sleep because another kind of wickedness began to reveal itself. Corruption within the “justice” system itself….As pundits predicted, the grand jury came back and pronounced “no bill” (aka no trial). Then two days ago, it was revealed that New York prosecutor Dan Donovan copied McCulloch’s precedent in the case against the killer of Eric Garner, Officer Pantaleo, and got the same result: no indictment (no trial)..