When worlds collapse: A week of clashes and concerns

Young chimpanzees from Jane Goodall Sanctuary of Tchimpounga (Congo Brazzaville).

Picture taken by Delphine Bruyere on December 9, 2006

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On Friday, I was at the first stop on my round of errands when I realized I had left home without my wallet. Not a big deal, as I carry my debit card separately, but my wallet holds my driver’s licence and other ID. Oh well, I thought. I do have a licence so if I’m stopped, I’ll just explain my situation to the police officer. And then I thought. Hmmm, I wonder if the officer will understand and give me leniency.

I wondered this, because earlier that morning I had read American historian Heather Cox Richardson’s column written the day before, on October 2nd. HCR detailed the raid on an apartment building in Chicago early Tuesday by federal agents who arrived by helicopter and in large vehicles; were dressed in military fatigues; and who used flashbang grenades. The short story is that people were marched outside, some naked, their hands zip tied, while their apartments were searched ransacked. In the end, 37 were detained. You can read the full horrifying account on HCR’s Substack.

Further fuelling my paranoia was what American historian Timothy Snyder said during CBC’s Front Burner podcast interview that same morning, referencing recent violent actions by ICE agents at a New York immigration court. Snyder said, “…if we want to preserve a democracy or preserve a rule-of-law state, we have to begin from the notion of equality, of dignity, of respect, and move away from taking pleasure in the pain of other people and move away from the politics of cruelty. And these public displays are advertisements for a politics of cruelty.” [emphasis is mine]

Life is full of pain and sorrow; it is unavoidable. But I cannot bear to witness deliberate and condoned cruelty. It makes me angry and fearful and sad. Are we not all human beings here?

Enter Jane Goodall, the gentle white-haired nonagenarian who witnessed the lives of wild chimpanzees, and who died on October 1. Over her decades of work, she taught the world that the wild chimps she observed make and use tools; hunt and eat meat; wage war; have strong mother/infant bonds; and show each other acts of compassion. Chimpanzees are, in fact, “humankind’s closest living relatives”. Goodall's lasting legacy runs deep, including this quote that was all over everywhere in the reporting of her death: “You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

Indeed. Decide what kind of difference we want to make.

I vote for making the difference of compassion and kindness; of smart thinking; of understanding the consequences of our actions; and of seeing each other as equal, worthy of dignity and respect.

All that is what I want to have the confidence to presume when a police officer stops me in my car for some reason and asks to see my licence when I have left it at home. The officer’s uniform gives them the right to stop me, to demand certain things of me. I am ok with that. But I will never be ok with someone in uniform executing the politics of cruelty we are seeing in the US today.

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PS: I was not stopped by anyone; I completed that first errand and returned home to retrieve my wallet before carrying on. Better safe than sorry, eh. 

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.