“I felt my feet were praying.”
– Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel on his experience in the third Selma to Montgomery march for civil rights.
I was marching through a display of Christmas trees with a group of Jews screaming for the rights of people of color when I was first struck by the question of what, exactly, “my feet were praying” might actually mean. I thought about it some more during the six-and-a-half minutes I spent lying on my back in the street in front of a Harlem police station exactly two weeks later, as I stared at what passes for stars in Manhattan, far from any restaurant I could eat in.
ERIC GARNER! MICHAEL BROWN! SHUT IT DOWN! SHUT IT DOWN!
I’ve written before about how I don’t like protests, but this movement is different. If I didn’t truly believe that, if I didn’t have overwhelming evidence that there is indeed a strong and unconscionable gap in this country between the way police forces treat white people and the way they treat people of color, there is no way I would have chosen to march in the cold shouting slogans at the top of my lungs when I could have been snuggling on the couch with my girlfriend and her old Basset hound watching The West Wing. But that’s the point—as both Jew and human being, I felt I had no other choice.
BLACK LIVES MATTER
Once I knew I wanted to protest, the question became which to attend. I heard from friends involved in the wider movement that there was going to be an action on the Upper West Side organized by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) December 4 starting just as I was on my way home from work. Perfect. Upon arrival, I immediately recognized people as they began trickling in: Friends from JTS, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Mechon Hadar, and Maharat, people from my shul…this was the Jewish People’s protest for the civil rights of our neighbors. Organizers taught us the chants and what not to do when out on the streets—apparently, there were only a set number of people who were supposed to get arrested, and the rest of us should listen to the cops when they tell us to get off the street. They didn’t have to tell me twice.
Since my only prior exposure to protest movements came through watching them on TV or avoiding association with them at the G-20 in Pittsburgh, my first inclination was toward cynicism: With all these other people here, what difference does my presence make? And anyway, isn’t it arrogant to think that a bunch of Jews holding signs on the Upper West Side are going to have any impact on anything? As though police forces around the country will say, “Uh oh, we got some Jews angry, I guess we’d better start treating black and brown people with more respect now!” So when they yelled “WHOSE STREETS?” I said “The City of New York’s!” though that apparently was not the answer they were going for.
Then I remembered the video of Eric Garner, the stories of Michael Brown’s and Tamir Rice’s last days on earth, the Trayvon Martin decision, and that hardness of heart—which is really a luxury born of white privilege—receded, and a fire lit inside me. I raised my voice beside my peers and let myself believe for once that maybe, just maybe, we can change things together.
My peers. The scene that night was unlike anything I’d ever seen before: About 200 Jews who probably wouldn’t agree on anything else marching side-by-side for justice in solidarity with an oppressed community besides our own. I was so proud of all of us. I prayed no one would bring up Israel and ruin it.
Then I noticed how we were blocking intersections. ‘What if a person of color is late getting home to her family because a bunch of Upper West Side Jews are marching for her rights?’ I thought. ‘Is it worth it? And how will the black community see us? There is a larger march happening at this moment downtown; why do we have to separate ourselves?’
But the members of the black community that we passed during the march were all supportive, at least as far as I could see. They encouraged us, and some even told stories of their own experiences with police brutality as we passed. Heartened by their support, that quote from my hero, Rabbi Heschel, first came to mind. “My feet were praying.”
WHOSE STREETS?
Yet that protest left me feeling uneasy afterward for many reasons: it contained few black people, was in a “safe” environment, and I’m not convinced that the planned arrests actually accomplished anything—it was pretty clear from the setup that getting arrested was more about making a statement by shutting down traffic in a major intersection than showcasing police brutality.
“The cops were actually pretty good last night,” I remarked to a fellow protester the following night at a Shabbat dinner. “We were pretty white last night,” she said.
I was left hungry to do something more, to protest with people who deal with this country’s race issues on a daily basis, those protesting not because it’s the right thing to do, but because their lives and the lives of their children depend upon it. I couldn’t make the giant “Justice for All” Millions March through New York City on December 13, so I decided instead to go to one of the 11 Days of Action, one night of protest for each of the 11 times Eric Garner said “I can’t breathe.” The night that worked best for me was Thursday the 18th, which happened to be a march through Harlem, a neighborhood that has seen more than its share of incidents with the police over the past few years.
I arrived straight from work and was immediately impressed by the diversity of the crowd—everyone from black children to white grandmas came to protest. There was no visible Jewish contingent and I knew no one there, but maybe that was for the best; I was there mostly to listen. “We don’t want anybody getting arrested tonight. We all have families and babies to get back to. Let’s all make sure we sleep at home with them tonight,” the protest leader said shortly after I arrived. The tone was palpably different in other ways too—people here were angry. Like, actually pissed off about the indignities they and their communities face on a daily basis. Sure, there were a few who wanted to make the protest about their own wingnut agendas, and there was even one local man wearing earbuds who insisted on shouting ALL LIVES MATTER. At first I thought that, with the earbuds, he was just mishearing what we were chanting, but it soon became clear that, nope, there was no need to keep politely correcting him, he knew exactly what he was saying. The overwhelming majority, though, were there to reform the system that has screwed them over for too long.
Our first stop on the march was the police station. We stood behind a low barrier while some mostly white cops stood in front of the building with their arms crossed, looking completely unmoved. The organizers announced we were going to have a “die-in” lasting 7 minutes. Maybe 5.5 minutes in, a man yelling about how we’re just laying here while the cops are terrorizing our neighborhoods raised us from our graves. An organizer said we still had a minute left, but by that point, almost everyone was standing, so there seemed no point in “dying” again. From there, we marched past organizers working to convince the man not to get arrested into the middle of 2nd Ave. Walking through traffic at night in New York City with no fear, with motorists joining in your chants, honking in support, or giving high-fives to the people holding them up, was one of the most wonderfully surreal moments of my life. That’s when the answer finally sunk in: Whose streets? OUR STREETS!
Unlike on the Upper West Side, this time I felt no compunction at all about holding up traffic. This “inconvenience” is just the point. It’s a way to force people to listen to what they don’t want to hear, to make plausible deniability of these issues impossible, so that we can finally begin to address and redress these issues even when we’d rather just sit inside our cozy apartments pretending that President Bartlet is in charge and everything is going to be okay.
I CAN’T BREATHE
Marching down 2nd Ave. toward our next destination, we shouted Eric Garner’s final words 11 times until we came to a concrete ball field in the middle of a housing project. We circled around to hear testimonies from residents standing in the middle.
The first speaker talked about how Harlem is rapidly being gentrified (“They’re bringing in white people!” a man in the crowd shouted), meaning longtime residents can no longer afford to live where they always have, forcing them into public housing projects like this one. Gentrification brings with it an increased police presence largely made up of rookie cops eager to prove themselves, she said, and they don’t do that by taking down yuppies.
If black cops were shooting unarmed white kids, no court—whether legal or of public opinion—would ever let them go, the second speaker emphasized, to wide audience approval.
From there, we waded through traffic again and choked off a major artery onto the Triboro Bridge, shutting it down for almost five minutes. Police were everywhere but no one got arrested. WHOSE STREETS? OUR STREETS!
We then turned the corner and ended back where we had started, with reminders that even though the action was over for today, we can’t stop the fight: THIS IS NOT A MOMENT, THIS IS A MOVEMENT.
Even though this protest contained chants I couldn’t bring myself to say, like “HOW DO YOU SPELL ‘RACIST’? NYPD! HOW DO YOU SPELL ‘OPPRESSION’? NYPD!” (the KKK is racist, the NYPD has serious flaws, but they aren’t evil) and calls for action that I feel are futile, like boycotting white-owned gentrifying businesses like Macy’s, I left feeling energized. I came, listened to, and did something in solidarity with these people whose stories of life under police force are unlike anything any community I am a part of has ever experienced.
Yet, I still had this lingering sense that, for all my good feelings, no protest I have been a part of would have been any more or less effective had I not been there, and that the entire #BlackLivesMatter movement has yet to achieve many concrete victories.
More importantly, the people who most need to hear our message still refuse to listen. Whether the excuse is because they like to imagine unarmed black civilians’ deaths are their own fault; or because the black community isn’t perfect, and therefore, I guess, invites racism upon itself; or because it gives them a chance to peddle conspiracy theories that conveniently exculpate them from blame, finding an excuse not to do anything about the serious problems we have with race in this country is awfully easy if the status quo seems to benefit you.
So why bother at all? The answer is what I have discovered is the true meaning of “my feet were praying.” It’s not that I went to a protest so I no longer have to go to shul, or that I think God will see that I marched and grant success to the movement. It’s that each step taken toward creating a better world is a tiny step toward making that world exist. If we’re being honest, a relatively small number of people shouting in the streets has about as much chance of effecting lasting change as whispering in the pews. But joining with others builds a community based on shared commitments to perfect the world. Only God knows what effect a prayer or a footstep might have once made, but if the process of making it leaves you and your community transformed, more sensitive to the needs of others, more dedicated to acting righteously and pursuing justice, then it is an effective step towards change.
So did I need to be there? Unequivocally yes. Not because I think my personal presence at either protest did anything to affect the power of the police, but because my refusal to be indifferent had an enormous impact on my power to make change happen. If I can live my life as the empathetic, compassionate person I was at the marches, and inspire others to be that way as well, then my feet’s prayers will have been answered indeed.
[M]orally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.
– Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Derek M. Kwait graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and is editor in chief of New Voices.
