Derek: 00:22

Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. Today, we are continuing our discussion on the Means and the Ends by taking a look at what I think is a powerful example of how this works out in the real world. This episode as well as the next one are going to be what I think are two very good segue episodes into our next season, and in our next season we are going to be exploring specific instances of non violence throughout history, and then delving into the theory of practical non violence in the real world. So I actually wrote this episode outline up in June of twenty twenty, and I'm recording, it's like mid October right now. So I've kind of got my episodes working about six months out in terms of writing at least.

Derek: 01:15

And while that's a pain sometimes, because it makes it harder to insert current event episodes, I am a hyper focused individual, so when I get ideas, I have to act on them. And since I'm working in in seasons, it means that I'm doing large chunks at one time. But I will say that I I do like it because I think that it's gonna be good for listeners to be able to reflect back in time, but also, think it's fun because when I record it, I really have no idea where we're gonna be six months from now. So right now, in case you forgot what was going on in, you know, June through October of twenty twenty, we're about, we were, when I wrote this, about two weeks into the protests which resulted from George Floyd's death. So whatever you think about the protest that erupted, the Black Lives Matter movement, any of that stuff, Regardless of of what you think about it, there have been some good and some bad examples of action and reaction in our society.

Derek: 02:19

The bad is usually pretty obvious. We can see that, in this particular instance, there were some white supremacists trying to make protesters look bad. We know that there were instances where there were white supremacists or people who were against the Black Lives Matter movement who would go out and they were not a part of that movement but started fires or looting or graffiti, whatever. Not that there weren't also protesters associated with those groups doing the same thing, but we know that there were some people trying to sabotage the movements as well. Now in all of these cases, whether it was somebody sabotaging an event or whether it was the Black Lives Matter movement or other people sabotaging their own events or their own communities, tensions rose, obviously, communities were harmed, and people were hurt and relationships strained.

Derek: 03:21

But then, there were also some beautiful depictions that we were able to see in all of this. One of the most beautiful scenes I saw, which occurred at a number of locations, was when the police force would join with protesters in kneeling. Some places had cookouts with the police and the community, sometimes the police marched with protesters, but the one which stood out the most to me was the one in which the police knelt with the protesters. That just, there's something about that solidarity to me that was just beautiful. And I think it stood out to me most because it represented the antithesis of the issue at hand.

Derek: 04:03

So police brutality and violence was being protested, and the opposite of that, the thing which would most represent the vulnerability of police officers is to kneel down, to bow heads and to assume a posture of submission. It's almost as if like an acknowledgement of the issue and saying, I submit to this critique even if I'm not individually responsible. I recognize the issue here and I wanna join you in solidarity. It's a very humbling thing to do. So for a group who is thought of as wanting to maintain control and to do so through power, force and dominance, seeing police officers humble themselves in solidarity and vulnerability was pretty amazing.

Derek: 04:50

I mean, literally they were putting their lives in the hands of the protesters. If anyone had a gun or wanted to get the jump on the police officers, that would have been a perfect opportunity to do that. But what you saw instead was that it caused protesters to break down in tears a lot of times. There were hugs exchanged and it was beautiful. So while a lot of times the protesters are depicted as just these vitriolic people who just hate police, and that I'm sure that probably is true sometimes, and police officers are also portrayed as just these power mongers who want to domineer people.

Derek: 05:25

What you see is that when one group, there's tension in one group for a specific reason, and the other group submits and just humbles themselves, a lot of times what you end up seeing is the road to reconciliation. You see that there is, maybe not complete forgiveness, but there's just this recognition of humanity and the beginning of restoration at least, a first step. A common phrase in the non violent community is that violence begets violence. It's no surprise then that where police postured with army gear and were clearly ready and seemingly desirous to do violence, violence was pretty quickly found. At the same time, where the authorities postured with humility, repentance, even if it wasn't for personal sins, if it was just this acknowledgement of wanting to be different than what has been, right?

Derek: 06:29

With their posturing of love, it elicited forgiveness and reciprocal love and at least the beginning of restoration. Riots are not solved by meeting them with violence and we saw that millions of times, or not millions of times, but a lot of times after the George Floyd incident because as MLK said, riots are the language of the unheard. And that just doesn't justify riots, it doesn't justify physical harm or property damage, but it's acknowledging that there's legitimate harm and there's legitimate underlying reason that people need to recognize. Riots are an inevitability in a community suppressed by violence. We can see this in the history of The United States because there have been quite a number of race riots throughout our history, even since the civil rights movement.

Derek: 07:26

And while each riot was eventually quelled, whether that was quelled by suppression and force or just quelled by kind of letting it run its course, the problem has obviously continued to fester because reconciliation was not achieved. Riots were often stopped with force and if there was change that resulted from the riots, it was often only just enough change to appease people for a time but it didn't really fix the problem or try to get at the problem. There was not a meeting of the black community with humility, love, repentance, and a desire to truly reconcile. Of course, a few police officers humbling themselves today doesn't mean that we're headed toward true reconciliation this time around, but they are a depiction of what that might look like or what that might involve. I'm optimistic that some of these police reforms are significant enough that they are true attempts to heal the black community.

Derek: 08:31

But I also know enough to have read the Kerner Commission back in the late 60s which said that there were huge problems that needed to be addressed and we're over fifty years beyond that and we're still having all of this pent up frustration. You know, that's a pent up frustration that I didn't realize existed until the past few years. As white individual, I would have always said, Hey, things were kind of fixed with the civil rights movement. And while the Civil Rights Movement was great, talking with black acquaintances, it's just, it's absolutely enlightened me as to how wrong I am. The things that they, the talks that they actually have with their kids, especially their sons, the experiences that they've had personally, I mean just blew my mind, like I would have thought that it was rare that this happens or it happens in certain communities.

Derek: 09:34

But I I have not talked to a black friend or acquaintance who has told me that they have not had a personal issue that I find really strange. Let me just give you one example. So, someone I know is a black man and a police officer. And I was talking to this person and asking them, What do you think about this movement? And he said, Oh yeah, definitely.

Derek: 10:03

It's been a long time coming. So this guy's a police officer who recognizes that the Black Lives Matter movement is good and has been a long time coming and I've heard that from one or two other police officers, second hand anyway. And it's just amazing. So I was talking to him and I asked him, you know, have you had experiences when you're not in uniform, when you're not in your police car, have you been pulled over for ridiculous things? And he's like, Oh yeah, lots of times.

Derek: 10:33

And telling me like this police officer pulled him over and said, Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't I didn't think you were wearing your seat belt. But then, he saw that he was, right? Or taillights that weren't out, things like that. Things that I would never even imagine being pulled over for. I mean, I know you can be pulled over for those legitimate infractions, you know, like a taillight, but who I've never been pulled over for that, had and most I have not spoken with a white person who's been pulled over for a stupid reason like that or knows somebody who has.

Derek: 11:11

I'm sure it's happened, but you talk to, you start talking to black people and the amount of them that have an experience with these obscure rules or these obscure things that people aren't usually stopped for, it's just, it's amazing. So, there is a lot of tension and there's a lot of stuff going on in that community and we see that boiling up and we have to ask ourselves, what can we do to fix it? And now, I wanna take a case study here, which I'm not trying to use this as, hey, I've got the answer to how we fix this thing because I don't have a specific answer. That's for people who are way smarter and way more understanding of politics and that kind of stuff. Because personally, I invest in the church and let secular people do their politics.

Derek: 12:12

But I do wanna offer kind of a scaffold, an outline, a structure of sorts, a vision, a dream, whatever you wanna call it. I want to provide a glimpse of what it might look like because right now, what we've, what our solution has been, has been law and order, it's been force, it's been violence, it's been police militarization, it's it's been a certain way, the way of aggression. And in this series, we've talked a lot about means and ends. The means are going to produce the ends in like fashion. Or another way to put it are, the means are the ends in the process of becoming.

Derek: 13:03

I really like that saying because it just sums it up so well. The means are the ends in the process of becoming. So let's take a look at a different part of the world and how you might be able to envision something like this. So take Costa Rica. Costa Rica has not had a standing army since 1948.

Derek: 13:27

And we could get into that and look at it and talk about its crime rate compared to other countries around it and how that's gone and what they do instead. But that's not that's not really my interest at the moment. You can look that up. It is a really interesting story and it's it's amazing for for me as a US citizen to imagine living in a country without an army when like over half of our budget ultimately ends up going towards army sorts of things here, towards the military. What does it look like to not have a military when we're told that military is our life, it's our survival, it's the only reason we're able to have the power and freedoms that we do.

Derek: 14:07

In fact, I I can only vote because of the military, so I don't know how they have elections in Costa Rica. But let's let's put Costa Rica to the side, and let you do your own research on that, because Camden, New Jersey is also another supposed success story in terms of overhauling a violent government force. Now, I'm sure that there are people who have a lot of different agendas who you can pick and choose stats, and pick and choose places, and initiatives. So you can do some further research into Camden, New Jersey. But at least on the surface from preliminary research and discussions and seeing what's going on there, it seems like it at least doesn't provide a worse alternative than police militarization, and it seems like it's actually doing a better job.

Derek: 15:02

So what people on the left are going to say is that in Camden, police were largely defunded and left the scene. So their number significantly reduced. And that's not true. There wasn't an instance where that did occur but then those police were rehired and such because, you know, it was a funding issue, it wasn't a policy sort of issue. But what you see is in that revamping of the police department, there were policy changes where I think the police chief said something to the extent of like, instead of being special forces, we are like the Peace Corps.

Derek: 15:41

And so the police started to have cookouts and started to focus on community relations, and there are a number of instances described where, you know, they're like, Hey, before we would have shot the guy and this time we were able to subdue the perpetrator without doing it. So you have more of a community emphasis, a Peace Corps type thing as opposed to an army, a standing army where you are going to just get the bad guys. And even though Camden is still extremely violent and more, I think it's the most violent city in New Jersey, you do see that this has kind of tapered off a bit, at least for Camden. Seems to be something that's working, it seems to be something that is influencing the community. And what you'll notice if you read other books like The End of Policing, which I highly recommend, the author doesn't advocate non violence, but he does correctly identify a lot of the issues with policing.

Derek: 16:51

Why does policing create so many problems? Why is there so much tension and animosity with policing? And I think the author does a good job of showing how police forces work and tend to actually stir up more violence. So I'll link that resource as well as a couple other good resources to the history of policing and the issues that policing has had. So I would never argue in the secular realm that there shouldn't be police because, you know, in a secular world, of course, there ought to be police.

Derek: 17:31

But what I would argue is that the way that we are doing policing in The United States just doesn't work. It creates more tensions and if you escalate violence, you're gonna and if you do violence, you're just gonna create more violence. You're gonna make things worse. And we don't only see that from the police who use tear gas and other kinds of things preemptively sometimes, but we also see that from the protesters. When they get up in people's faces, when they throw rocks, when they do violence, that tends to escalate the violence.

Derek: 18:09

And so as we as we are in this kind of tumultuous time in The States, and we we are thinking about race issues, whether that's thinking about how we go out and voice our concerns as citizens, and how we protest, or whether that's thinking about how we want to shape our police force, keeping this idea of means and ends in mind is going to be really important for how we go about doing that. While I don't know where we will be in six months or five years from now, or fifty years from now, I think we have a lot that we can learn from Jesus, which makes sense. And I anticipate that if our culture is truly seeking to reconcile, I think this will come about not through force, but through gently seeking to understand and by our humble repentance. Next episode is going to be the last episode of the season, and it's gonna kind of be a continuation on this. In that, I'm gonna talk about race.

Derek: 19:19

So the Kerner Commission, we know that that talked about how there were just these underlying issues that needed change in society, and talked about needing laws and other sorts of things to change that. But in the next episode, we're going to talk about what truly changes society and whether laws have actually done that, whether the government has been able to do that. So that's more of the ideological take on this. This is more of the kind of physical presence take on it. So anyway, that's all for now.

Derek: 19:59

So peace and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.