What do we do?

I am a 34-year-old Marine Corps veteran who lives in Vacaville. More importantly, I am a citizen of the United States of America who passionately loves his country.

I am writing today to appeal to you all as those who share my interests and concerns. We can no longer continue to turn a blind eye to the situations our country is currently enduring. We can no longer pretend everything is OK and the status quo will suffice. We can no longer simply hope that things change while offering empty thoughts, prayers, and condolences. Our leaders were elected by us, the people, and in electing them, we have expectations. Not a single one of those expectations involves spending their entire time in office preparing for the next election. Not one single elected official earned a vote by promising to use our time and funds to work on getting re-elected. They’re elected to represent us, listen to us, hear us, care for us, and fight for us.

I have a very important question for you all: What are we supposed to do? Many of us have nothing left to lose. Many of us have lost our businesses, our vehicles, our homes, our income, our savings, our livelihood, and slowly, our patriotism and trust in our government is waning. What are we supposed to do about the hundreds and hundreds of social injustices that we’ve witnessed and the hundreds more that are swept under the rug? What are we supposed to do when peaceful protest doesn’t work? What are we supposed to do when appealing to our elected officials doesn’t work? What are we supposed to do when calling on the Department of Justice for reform doesn’t work?

Do we turn a blind eye and just hope that nobody we love is affected, hope that nothing scary happens in our neighborhood? What are we supposed to do when we gather to demonstrate and are met with batons, tear gas, beanbag bullets, and violent law enforcement officials? What are we supposed to do when police vehicles that say things on them like “To Protect and Serve” and “Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect” become weapons used to plow over citizens? What are we supposed to do when we come to fear those very law enforcement officers who swore an oath to never betray the public trust? What are we supposed to do when that fear turns to anger, anger to aggression, aggression to rebellion?

What are we supposed to do when each morning, we hear, read, and see more news of police brutality and callousness? What are we supposed to do when yet another American is murdered while dozens of citizens are begging the police not to kill him?

American citizens pleading with American police to stop an American from becoming a victim of a murder being carried out by one of their own in an American street. You can’t be surprised at the civil unrest that has sprung up in cities across our country. The people have had enough. But what are we supposed to do? We certainly can’t get involved physically. I’ll provide an example from the incident with Mr. George Floyd involving the police officers from the Minneapolis Police Department. Let’s say I was there. I’m well aware that crushing a human being’s windpipe with one’s knee can prove fatal. So I beg and plead with Derek Chauvin and his accomplices to stop murdering this American citizen and my protests fall on deaf ears. Do I, someone who fought for his country for a decade, then stand idly by and watch a murder take place? No, I take it upon myself to act by removing Derek Chauvin from Mr. Floyd’s neck through force. And with that one simple act, I have now made myself a criminal, placed myself at risk of also being murdered, and possibly not accomplished my goal of saving a life. In this scenario, I’ve also emboldened the police involved to become more aggressive and militarized, which in turn places more of my fellow citizens in danger.

What are we supposed to do when law enforcement views anyone not wearing a badge as their enemy? When what starts as a protest or demonstration devolves due to the police trying to “control” the people and the media because it suits the narrative many of them have developed that it’s “us against them.” I see them on American streets in full riot gear pumping themselves up like they’re going into combat in a war zone, and I can’t help but think that many of them believe they are.

The killing of unarmed people of color and the brutal suppression of peaceful protesters are both directly linked to the militarization of local police forces. This militarization includes equipment (through 1033 and similar programs), which is putting weapons of war into the hands of local police departments. It has also included the increasing use of military training and tactics — including the knee-on-neck hold that killed George Floyd. Recent protests against Floyd’s killing were met with the most disturbing, but perhaps inevitable, conclusion of unchecked militarism, when Trump ordered the deployment of military troops against nonviolent protesters for the first time since the 1970s.

This program was born of Pentagon waste and the racist drug war of the 1990s. Since the program launched, over $7 billion of military hardware — including assault rifles, grenade launchers, bayonets, and tactical armored vehicles — have been distributed to local police forces through the Department of Defense Excess Property Program (informally known as 1033). Since then these weapons of war have been used against unarmed people of color and nonviolent protesters, including in Ferguson, which led the Obama administration to curtail the program in 2015. In 2017, 1033 was reinstated by President Trump.

Program 1033 is a concrete, winnable objective, and an opportunity for campaign work at both national and local scales. A new administration could sign an Executive Order to end 1033 (or at least start by returning to the Obama-era curtailing of the program). Local campaigns can also demand that individual towns and cities opt out of the program. Targeting 1033 also gives us the opportunity to talk about defense spending and larger budget priorities, which creates the conditions for such a vast surplus of military equipment.

I’d be willing to wager that very few citizens are totally against the idea of law enforcement existing. Law enforcement is necessary and plays a very important role in society. However, many citizens long for the days when everybody knew their neighborhood cop. When the officers patrolling the communities are members of the same communities, they’re much more likely to take a compassionate approach to enforcing laws.

There used to be a time when if you see squad cars in your neighborhood, your first thought would be that they’d showed up to take a report on a car accident or help find a kid who ran away or whatever. Now, the sight of a patrol car instills fear in the people and they anxiously peer through their windows wondering how many armored vehicles are going to show up. Additionally, it’s important for us to take a good, hard look at the way law enforcement Academies vet their recruits. A lawyer has to go to school for years to understand and be able to interpret and defend laws, but the cops who are supposed to enforce them attend an academy for a few weeks, few months at the most. A disturbingly small portion of law enforcement officers have any real life experience or community involvement prior to becoming sworn officers, and very few of them have any education outside of (sometimes) a high school diploma or what they learned in the military. These are the people that our governments have provided with fully automatic weapons, unlimited lethal and “less than lethal” ammunition, body armor, and armored vehicles. They don’t have the emotional capacity, nor the psychological stamina, to deal with even the most basic of scenarios, much less “crowd control.”

What are we supposed to do when faced with ever-present inaction from our elected officials? What are we supposed to do when those who we cast votes for refuse to take a stand on the issues that mean the most to those they’ve sworn to hear? Systemic police brutality is simply the tip of the iceberg. The quiet oppression of people who feel their concerns aren’t being heard or validated will only lead to more civil disturbance. In any city in our country, you can witness homelessness, poverty, the inability to access housing, lack of health care, citizens being incarcerated in for-profit prisons for victimless crimes, for -profit real estate developers who intimidate citizens in their own homes, and overall social inequality on multiple levels. I choose to reach out because I know that you all know action is needed and there are many citizens, myself included, who are looking for guidance and leadership and are also willing to step up to help and lead in any way necessary.

We’re better than this. We as a nation are so, so, so much better than this. I’m pleading with you all with tears in my eyes to listen to us, hear us, and address us. We need leadership now more than ever.

So ... what are we supposed to do? — Mike Tilden/Vacaville