Recently, I was watching footage from the 1950s lunch counter sit-ins and there’s a few things that really stood out to me. First, the young black men sitting at the counter never once lifted a hand to defend or ward off the attacks of the white crowd that surrounded them. The took the abuse and the beatings. Second, those young black men were handcuffed and arrested for sitting peacefully at a lunch counter. The white men who accosted those young protestors were not arrested. They were not held accountable for aggravated assault. The thing is, this behavior hasn’t really changed. If you really take the time to dissect the footage from recent Black Lives Matter protests, you will see white people instigating violence while the black protestors are met with abuse.

We have a history of legal hypocrisy in this country.

I don’t know why some protests lead to riots, but here are some thoughts. When J was killed by a car bomb in Iraq, I felt rage. I still feel rage, but at that time I was angry over the circumstances of his death and wanted to hold everyone, including our government accountable. At times that rage was and is so blindingly hot that I feel like throwing furniture across the room. If there was a crowd of people standing around me, inciting and encouraging my rage, I would throw furniture across the room. The protests that I have witnessed here have been peaceful until a small handful of people with a different agenda have shown up on the scene. That handful of people have all been white and they have shown up with one purpose and that is to instigate violence. They are the ones encouraging the rage.

There is a group of influencers out there that do not want you to ever raise your own voice and question authority. Those influencers mesh together the words riots and protests in a way to confuse you into believing that those two words are the same action. They play up the violence in order to scare you and control you with that fear. Because those influencers do not want you to question. They do not want you to speak out for justice. Protests are a sign that something isn’t quite right with this country. They put a magnifying glass over the ugly parts. Protests make us aware of our faults and in the case of the Black Lives Matter movement we see that racism and civil rights are still, STILL, a thing in this country. Our faults in this country are embarrassing and shameful. We can either be brave enough to acknowledge those faults and be part of the change to make things better or we can allow those influencers to continue control us with fear.

I am disappointed in those people who have fallen for the rhetoric of those influencers. I am disappointed that they don’t have it in themselves to question the voices of those influencers, to not even pause and wonder if they are getting a whole story from those influencers. I am disappointment in how easily and how readily those people are to believe the voices of those influencers. I am disappointed in how easily they can be persuaded to lose their first amendment rights. What happens when it’s their turn to question authority?

Sometimes a forest has to burn to the ground in order to promote new growth.