Fear

Glen is going to work tomorrow.  For the fourth day in a row I am watching protesters move through the city.  The police chief says the hard part is that these protesters have decided not to register and they keep moving, which makes it hard to protect them or stop them if they get violent.  Also they keep sending off splinter groups, which seems to be on purpose to divide the police numbers.  For two days in a row they have overcome the highway through and out of town and yesterday they had to deploy teargas to stop them.  Glen says he knows different ways out of the city but I wish he would not go in at all.

People in and around the city have begun arming themselves.  The mayor is calling for people to not be vigilantes.  A gun store owner this morning shot and killed one of several men who deliberately and clearly with forethought broke into his store.  The men had a gun and pointed it at the owner, but he fired first.  I am afraid for what will happen to that man and his shop and that neighborhood tonight.  Will this get worse if people fight back?  The mayor is mourning the loss of another life, but it seems to me like it was going to be a loss either way.  Other guns stores today were flooded with homeowners and shop owners buying guns.

Today a synagogue that our church partners with frequently held a peaceful protest out here.  Our pastor said he was going and invited all of us.  I want to stand with them, but I was afraid to go.  I used the excuse that Alex had her math placement test, but it ended early enough that if I hustled truly I could have made it.  I don't trust any of these protests anymore.  How long until it begins to move to affluent areas if it is not stopped?  I am not saying we are better than anyone.  I don't want it to be happening to anyone, anywhere.  I don't care about our stuff, but I worry for our safety.  I do worry about the stuff in the neighborhoods they are burning.  Those people don't have any other stuff or means to get more stuff.  They need every inch they have.  I just wonder how long it will take to begin to cross the distance.

Today we saw three black men on bikes on our street.  We don't know them.  They didn't look like cyclists (which we get all the time) and they were not wearing bike attire or even helmets.  They had random bikes, not cycles like they were on a real ride.  One had pants around his butt.  Is it wrong that I felt nervous?  Is that profiling?  I feel like I would have wondered about any color men who looked odd like that and out of place, but the reality is I can't know.   They were black and there were not other strange men passing through.  Most people passing through look like they are serious about their bikes, or like families or like they are exercising or like people I know.   

I do not pretend to know what they are going through.  I am trying to listen.  I watched a clip of looters running out of a store and getting in their cars.  When the police came up to stop them, they ran them over.  One of the cops now has 12 broken ribs, 5 broken vertebrae, a crushed arm and shoulder...  In two days he has had two surgeries.  I am trying.  Maybe they stole enough stuff to feed their baby and buy diapers for another week.  Is that worth the injury to the police officer?