This morning, Milwaukee’s DA announced that there will be no criminal charges against Chris Manney, the policeman who killed Dontre Hamilton last May. The man had been sleeping. The cop poked and prodded him. A struggle ensued and the cop started hitting him in the head with a baton. The man grabbed the baton, the cop grabbed his service Smith & Wesson .40 caliber semi-automatic pistol and pumped fourteen bullets into him, one in his back. We know all too well that under current law, no cop will ever be charged with a criminal offense in the killing of a person of color no matter how egregious, no matter the circumstance, no matter the evidence. It just doesn’t happen. Every circumstance is extenuating, every victim a threat.
So today a handful of people met in the cold and rain to talk and hug and mumble about the need for change and query about all the arrests that were the outcome of the freeway standoff last Friday. People agreed that it was a radical and aggressive act of civil disobedience. It was brave. It was bold. At least people did something. Certainly people all around the state are talking about it. It is less certain how effective it was in winning hearts and minds and building movements, and it is quite certain that it will cost a lot of people a lot of money and time to deal with the criminal charges.
We milled about and tried to keep warm. Coffee came, along with boxes of donuts. The Starbucks had shut down out of totally unfounded fear ginned by local media. There would be riots. Looting. The National Guard was ready and hiding in the suburbs. Perhaps Starbucks were frightened by their own duplicity in calling in a complaint about a sleeping black man on a bench last May, a common occurrence in the consumerist demands of propriety. After all it is actually illegal to sleep in a park in Milwaukee. Not overnight, mind you - that is clearly illegal - but to, like, nap on a bench on a sunny day. I think I could get away with it if I snoozed a bit on a sunny day. Dontre Hamilton wasn’t so lucky.
More people gathered and it was announced that we would march to the Federal Building, where the Hamilton family was going to give a press conference. It was more like a vigil than a protest. People were somber and silent as we took to the streets, crossed at the crosswalks, stayed on the sidewalk. I was quietly speaking with a friend about her night in jail when quite suddenly a bunch of cops lunged at the cluster of people right in front of me, grabbed a black man, and dragged him into the street. Something made of glass, a bottle perhaps, broke right next to me. I’ve experienced this before - an immediate charge of electric anger runs through the crowd. You can almost hear it crackle. It reminds me of those nature documentaries where an elk herd smells the hunter. I couldn’t figure out why this happened, what happened; this shattering violence. It seemed entirely an effort to provoke violence with violence. People started moving towards the police, yelling. Anger was as ragged as emotions were raw. Other marchers rounded the group up like wranglers, shouting and waving us back onto the sidewalk. “Don’t let them do this to us!” And we moved silently on, fists raised, as the cops roughly pulled the young black man into a wagon. A few of the policemen were laughing each to each, watching us with lean looks of predators more curious than hungry. We marched the remaining few blocks to the Federal Building in defiance, as strong as peace is silent.
The press conference was powerful. The executive director of the ACLU of Wisconsin expressed their group’s concern and support of the Hamilton family in their quest for justice. A leader from the NAACP took the podium and noted that Dontre “was well within his rights to be in the park, and was not engaged in any illegal activity” and that “this outcome hearkens back to the days of Jim Crow, when a black life could be taken with impunity.” A young black street activist electrified the crowd with a terse speech exclaiming “this is not the first time we have been here. Within the last three to four years, we done been here for Darius Simmons, we done been here for Derrick Williams, we done been here for Corey Stingley and now we here again for Dontre Hamilton. So, it shows a pattern of behavior. This is nothing new for Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But the rest of the nation is beginning to wake up and see the same thing is beginning to happen all over.”
Nate Hamilton, a tall, quiet, thoughtful young man, stepped forward, flanked by two members of the Nation of Islam who each put up a Black Power fist. Activism was thrust upon Nate on the day that he drove to the park to pick up his brother, who suffered from mental instability. The family worried about Dontre, loved him and cared for him. Nate’s speech was slow and deliberate, as if he could carve each word into the air:
“My family. We won’t cry… The Federal Government. They know. They know justice has to come to the people… Why can’t... Why can’t justice come to the people? Do we not deserve to be treated right? …We sweat. We sweat every day at work. But then come home to be treated like pets. And, on April 30th, he took a thirty-one year old’s life. He massacred… my brother. He stood there and looked at him. He sized him up. And he killed him with hate. He killed him with intent. And now he has the mental problem! He been had the mental problem. The whole system has a mental problem!”
“So today, we activate the power of the people. All people. Come out Let’s stand together. Let’s unite.”
And that’s precisely what we did, one hundred and more people, young and old, black and white, heart broken for a grieving family, and a scared and scarred country. We were confused, angry, weary, but resolute, when we marched the few miles in the December rain to All People’s Church. How do we make change? When might we collectively learn to be human? Once at the church everyone sang, ate pizza, talked, listened to plans and testimonials.
We kept the press who are so eager for violence and sadness outside the church doors, and we plotted the next civil disobedience actions soon to unfold. Civil disobedience seems the embodied language of insistence, a performed theater of the dispossessed. Brave and desperate are the cries for justice. It is a justice that hangs like the moon on the horizon, hoped for, yet never arriving.