The sound of silence?

"White silence is violence."

I stared at the sign held by a protester standing on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol on my T.V. screen. When the image changed I continued to ponder what the sign meant. To me. To you. To America. To Mr. Floyd. 

I pondered for a lot longer than the 8 minutes and 46 seconds it took to take Mr. Floyd's life. 

Just a couple of weeks ago I sat in the comfort of my living room watching armed white Americans (some carrying automatic assault rifles) standing on the steps of the same Colorado State Capitol demanding that the Governor relax, no - remove, the economic restrictions put in place to protect us from a worldwide pandemic that has now claimed more than 105,000 American lives. The not-so-veiled threat of course was that if Governor Polis did not 'reopen' the State on his own the protesters would do it for him. 

"White silence is violence." 

Four words on a handmade sign. Silence. Merriam Webster defines silence, among other things, as forbearance from speech or noise. To not speak up, to not speak out, is to remain silent.

What appalls me most about Mr. Floyd's death is not that it came at the hands, or more accurately the knee, of a police officer. What struck me as I watched the horrible video was that three other police officers, no - three other human beings, stood silent and did nothing as the life ebbed from Mr. Floyd as he lay on that Minneapolis street. In 2020 does police training truly not cover how to intercede when a fellow officer crosses the line? In exactly these types of situations? 

Newscasts from around the country showed police officers kneeling in respect for Mr. Floyd. In Denver, our police chief, Paul Pazen, walked arm in arm with Black Lives Matter protesters through the streets of Denver. The message of course is that they are different than Mr. Chauvin, the white Minneapolis police officer who's knee killed Mr. Floyd, and the other three officers who stood silent. I'm not sure I believe them. 

Statistics show that a black man has a 1 in a thousand chance of being killed by police in his lifetime, 2.5 times the odds for a white man. In a Kyle Clark (9News) interview this week Denver Mayor Hancock acknowledged that Denver police had murdered 3 men of color in just the recent past. And Colorado has a very suspect history when it comes to race relations.  

If I were to make a protest sign it would ask "Will we let the past define our future?" If you believe the answer is yes then there is no hope that Mr. Floyd will be the last of an already too long list of those killed by officers purporting to 'Serve and Protect'. Change is hard, but it is possible. 

If we choose not to be silent.

As an aside, it was literally almost two years ago to the day that I was writing in this blog about Colin Kaepernick teaching me a lesson. Truly, the lessons are there if we only heed them.