They Are Murdering My Black Neighbors, My Disabled Tribesmen

Now that murdering black citizens in the United States is legion, and owing to the incontestable fact that the murderers are police, I hereby declare my civil disobedience. Cue: roll the B footage of Thoreau:

“If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth–certainly the machine will wear out… but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”

Yes. It’s time to become counter-friction. Of course it was always time. And I’ve been inconvenient before—having protested the Viet Nam war; the war on Nicaragua; successive wars in the mid-east. Sure. I’ve been a peacenik.

But counter-friction means inconveniencing the machine. I have failed to inconvenience it. I see this now.

I’m blind. I walk with a guide dog. I’m 60 years old. What can I do?

I’m grieving for all my black friends.

I grieve for the disabled people who have been routinely brutalized by cops.