FERGUSON

TWT is trying to walk a middle path tonight.

---

I participated in non-violent religious protests against the World Trade Organization in 1999. We walked down the middle of downtown Seattle streets on our way to protest outside the Kingdome's Exhibition Hall, where the WTO delegates were gathered. The police knew we were coming and put up temporary chain link fences as we marched. We had so many people present that we surrounded the Kingdome and the fences by holding hands and singing hymns.

We could walk down the streets because most of Seattle had been abandoned in advance of the non-religious protests that would follow the next few days.

But I don't understand protesters in Seattle tonight walking onto I-5 to stop traffic.

---

I understand anger at a grand jury decision one doesn't agree with, but I don't understand how that anger leads to looting mom-and-pop businesses in the same neighborhood in which one lives.

---

I hope that we don't become a culture of trial by social media. Or a culture of trial by the national news media.


---

I've served on two jury cases—one an assault, the other a murder. They were both difficult cases. The evidence and witnesses in each led to different conclusions—acquittal in the former, conviction in the latter. But the amount of time and energy the juries spent on each was intense and one side in each case was unhappy with our decision.

The grand jury in the Ferguson case spent 25 days over a three-month period of time hearing from dozens of witnesses and sorting through hundreds of pieces of evidence. I won't presume to know what that grueling process was like, anymore than I will presume to know the betrayal that the family of Michael Brown feels after the grand jury's decision.

---

This year, my family discovered that its family mythology, its genealogical record, and its DNA evidence are in a bit of conflict with one another. There was always some mystery and dispute in the former two, but the latter highlighted those mysteries and disputations (without necessarily solving them; in fact, it may have made them even more ambiguous and messy). We knew that there was Native American ancestry (although to what extent has been another mystery), but we weren't quite prepared for the possibility of Portuguese slave traders and West African slaves that now stares at us.

The discovery doesn't make me feel black or want to claim African descent, but it does open my eyes to a world that I am more related to than I once thought.

Native American ancestors and African ancestors stand alongside Western European and Northern European and Southern European ancestors. And now Eastern Europe ancestors also likely stand alongside all of the above. It changes who I am and how I think of who I am.

---

Questions:

Is America the melting pot we like to claim it is?
Or are we different groups of people living next to one another?
Do we really know one another?
Do we listen to one another? (Or do we merely talk (or shout) over one another?)

---

I don't have any answers tonight.

---

Tonight, more than anything, I'm confused.

---

The only thing I can do at this point is pray.

Pray for peace. Pray for understanding. Pray for systems to be changed, for all men (and women) to be treated equal.