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I often hear people say that you cannot fully understand someone’s suffering until you have walked a mile in their shoes. I think this saying is true, because it is almost impossible to grasp the intensity of a situation until you are thrust into the middle of it with no way out.
I am writing this letter to tell you that I finally had my moment of true realization, my epiphany. The Seattle Police Department has faced massive amounts of criticism for the last few months due to uses of excessive force and possible police brutality. Communities of color have been especially angry that the police have seemingly targeted them with their use of excessive force. From the very beginning, I felt a sense of solidarity with the marginalized populations who had been victimized by overzealous law enforcement, but it wasn’t until this week that I felt fully motivated.
After passing through Tuesday’s protest outside of police headquarters, I finally “got it.” I finally felt true sympathy over the police situation. When I saw those protestors with their raw emotion, their feeling of betrayal by the system, and their blind rage against a government that did not do for them what they wanted, I knew that I had no choice but to throw my support behind the Seattle Police Department.
Look, I’m not one to condone police brutality. But my visceral reaction to the situation has almost nothing to do with the police and almost everything to do with the filthy street urchins protesting outside police headquarters. It’s like the Seattle WTO protests from 1999 swept all of its rejects under a rock and they have been waiting to come out, only they are 12 years dirtier, crazier, and angrier now than they were then.
I am writing this letter to tell you that I finally had my moment of true realization, my epiphany. The Seattle Police Department has faced massive amounts of criticism for the last few months due to uses of excessive force and possible police brutality. Communities of color have been especially angry that the police have seemingly targeted them with their use of excessive force. From the very beginning, I felt a sense of solidarity with the marginalized populations who had been victimized by overzealous law enforcement, but it wasn’t until this week that I felt fully motivated.
After passing through Tuesday’s protest outside of police headquarters, I finally “got it.” I finally felt true sympathy over the police situation. When I saw those protestors with their raw emotion, their feeling of betrayal by the system, and their blind rage against a government that did not do for them what they wanted, I knew that I had no choice but to throw my support behind the Seattle Police Department.
Look, I’m not one to condone police brutality. But my visceral reaction to the situation has almost nothing to do with the police and almost everything to do with the filthy street urchins protesting outside police headquarters. It’s like the Seattle WTO protests from 1999 swept all of its rejects under a rock and they have been waiting to come out, only they are 12 years dirtier, crazier, and angrier now than they were then.
[RIGHT- Stopping people from getting to Northgate via Greenwood is not going to end police brutality. Now get down from there.]
The protest itself was an unapologetic assault on all five senses. As I innocently walked to the bus stop, people brushed by me, coating my jacket with a combination of putrid sweat and grimy filth layered from weeks without bathing. I could feel the threads on my cloth gloves turning into dreadlocks as I hurried past. Their stench wafted over the block like a hovering cloud. Although the smell of urine and stale cigarettes wasn’t visible, you could smell it like the dust cloud that follows Pigpen around in Peanuts cartoons. The stench was so intense that anyone who hadn’t been incrementally acclimated to it beforehand immediately gagged violently or vomited slightly. Needless to say, I had not spent time at disgusting protest boot camp, so I suffered the latter fate. As if the stench wasn’t painful enough on its own, it combined with the taste of partially-digested falafel in the back of my throat in a medley that made me want to find the nearest shotgun for quick relief.
If this situation sounds oppressive to you so far, you may want to avert your eyes, because it became even more torturous. I had almost made it through the fray when my attention was diverted by a 5-foot tall woman of some Hispanic descent. She was possibly the most foul-smelling beast in this whole circus, like a bear that had shit on itself but didn’t know enough to clean it off. Being around this many people must have been a new experience for her. She was coated with a thick layer of grease that was either sweat that she had worked up during her frothing fervor or a dusting of Crisco left over from breakfast that morning. Either one would be realistic considering that she weighed at least 250 pounds. She had the center of gravity of a paperweight.
Now, I would simply look away, but she apparently thought that the protest uniform was an undersized black tank top with spaghetti straps and not enough fabric to cover the stretch marks on her stomach or chest. I hate to be shallow, but the sight was so appalling that I couldn’t help but become transfixed. She was a human car wreck, and I was not immune to rubbernecking. Unfortunately, she caught my gaze and unleashed a fury upon me that made me wonder if she was actually part dragon. The fire she spewed at me was consistent with my dragon hypothesis, and it came out as shouts of “FUCK YOU WHITE BOY!” over and over, like some bizarre eastern religion mantra. I tried to walk away, but I was stunned- I had gone into a stupor as my senses were not prepared to deal with this enormous dose of the anti-culture (I hesitate to call it the counter-culture when the orienting principle of these monsters appeared to be entropy, destruction, or some hybrid of the two).
Luckily, I came to my senses before she got the crowd to turn on me. I speed-walked past my bus stop and caught the next available cab before things got really sideways. What’s $10 when your life is on the line? I narrowly escaped that morass of humanity, and my life will never be the same again.
I understand that police brutality can be a problem, but there are sociopaths in every line of work. I guess you should probably try to figure out which ones are crazy before you hand out the guns. While this disgusting mob treated a reputable city block as a cross between a mosh pit and a public latrine, dozens of cops stood around calmly and prevented anyone from getting hurt. Of course some cops are bad. And those cops should be punished. But the people who are so disaffected with society that they show up to a pointless, all-day protest instead of going to work or doing something productive are, on balance, more messed up than the police who they are protesting. That’s why the police protest moved me off the fence and squarely on the side of the law.
Sincerely,
Terrance Verona
The protest itself was an unapologetic assault on all five senses. As I innocently walked to the bus stop, people brushed by me, coating my jacket with a combination of putrid sweat and grimy filth layered from weeks without bathing. I could feel the threads on my cloth gloves turning into dreadlocks as I hurried past. Their stench wafted over the block like a hovering cloud. Although the smell of urine and stale cigarettes wasn’t visible, you could smell it like the dust cloud that follows Pigpen around in Peanuts cartoons. The stench was so intense that anyone who hadn’t been incrementally acclimated to it beforehand immediately gagged violently or vomited slightly. Needless to say, I had not spent time at disgusting protest boot camp, so I suffered the latter fate. As if the stench wasn’t painful enough on its own, it combined with the taste of partially-digested falafel in the back of my throat in a medley that made me want to find the nearest shotgun for quick relief.
If this situation sounds oppressive to you so far, you may want to avert your eyes, because it became even more torturous. I had almost made it through the fray when my attention was diverted by a 5-foot tall woman of some Hispanic descent. She was possibly the most foul-smelling beast in this whole circus, like a bear that had shit on itself but didn’t know enough to clean it off. Being around this many people must have been a new experience for her. She was coated with a thick layer of grease that was either sweat that she had worked up during her frothing fervor or a dusting of Crisco left over from breakfast that morning. Either one would be realistic considering that she weighed at least 250 pounds. She had the center of gravity of a paperweight.
Now, I would simply look away, but she apparently thought that the protest uniform was an undersized black tank top with spaghetti straps and not enough fabric to cover the stretch marks on her stomach or chest. I hate to be shallow, but the sight was so appalling that I couldn’t help but become transfixed. She was a human car wreck, and I was not immune to rubbernecking. Unfortunately, she caught my gaze and unleashed a fury upon me that made me wonder if she was actually part dragon. The fire she spewed at me was consistent with my dragon hypothesis, and it came out as shouts of “FUCK YOU WHITE BOY!” over and over, like some bizarre eastern religion mantra. I tried to walk away, but I was stunned- I had gone into a stupor as my senses were not prepared to deal with this enormous dose of the anti-culture (I hesitate to call it the counter-culture when the orienting principle of these monsters appeared to be entropy, destruction, or some hybrid of the two).
Luckily, I came to my senses before she got the crowd to turn on me. I speed-walked past my bus stop and caught the next available cab before things got really sideways. What’s $10 when your life is on the line? I narrowly escaped that morass of humanity, and my life will never be the same again.
I understand that police brutality can be a problem, but there are sociopaths in every line of work. I guess you should probably try to figure out which ones are crazy before you hand out the guns. While this disgusting mob treated a reputable city block as a cross between a mosh pit and a public latrine, dozens of cops stood around calmly and prevented anyone from getting hurt. Of course some cops are bad. And those cops should be punished. But the people who are so disaffected with society that they show up to a pointless, all-day protest instead of going to work or doing something productive are, on balance, more messed up than the police who they are protesting. That’s why the police protest moved me off the fence and squarely on the side of the law.
Sincerely,
Terrance Verona
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