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player ready...As a journalist marching with a protest, I sometimes, briefly, feel cowardly or like a fraud because I’m not participating. I’m raising a camera as others are raising their voices to chant or their fists in solidarity.
I do it, though, to maintain impartiality, to document what’s happening so that reality may reveal the truth. On Wednesday, I went to cover the protest that started at Daley Plaza and wound its way past the Chicago Board of Trade and, later, along North Michigan Avenue.
The protesters were calling for Mayor Emanuel to resign because of the way he handled the aftermath of Laquan McDonald’s death; the black teen was shot 16 times by a white police officer, and Emanuel—in the throes of re-election—fought hard to prevent the release of police dash-cam video of the October 2014 shooting, only for a judge to force his hand. Protestors chanted “No justice, no peace” as they marched, and as I walked with them I thought, “No truth, no justice.”
As I’m sitting here writing, I have that chant playing through my head and I’m thinking of all the horrible shit that keeps happening in our sweet home Chicago. Beyond my role as an impartial photojournalist, I’m also thinking about the lies told to us and that we tell to each other. We need peace. We can’t have peace without justice. We can’t have justice until we are willing to inconvenience ourselves with the truth.
The truth of our city—the uneven split of resources and opportunities and the truth of the violence that results from such inequality. The truth that the violence between the have-nots and police will always continue as long as we think of police as the solution.
Most members of the police force strive to do the right thing, to keep the peace, but they alone cannot right the wrongs in our society. They don’t write the laws, they only enforce them. They cannot undo the effects of our city’s history of institutionalized racism. However, they can and must hold one another accountable just as we must hold ourselves accountable, just as we must hold our politicians accountable.
The truth is our citizens will be killed as long as we turn a blind eye to our city’s problems. Killed as long as we focus on fixing the violence rather then the cause of the violence. Until we seek justice for every Chicagoan, there will be no peace for those who care about the truth.