As I watched video from looting at a QuikTrip in Ferguson, so many thoughts went through my mind. I watch the videos from the safety of my home, in a quiet neighborhood, states away but feeling connected because St. Louis will always be my first home.
But, as I watched, I felt myself disconnecting from the reality, almost unable to comprehend that this was real.
But, then I remember. St. Louis.
I think about my days teaching in the inner city of St. Louis. The day our school was robbed, in broad daylight, while a knife threatened the PE teacher, and computers were stolen from the gym. While kids played on the playground. While I taught math to children upstairs.
I think about the tiny fourth grader who brought a razor knife to school in his desk because he told me he was going to protect his younger brother on the way home from school. While classmates sat next to him.
I remember the large group of kids who lived in a group home, who wanted so badly to go back with their families. To families where abuse was the norm, where parents had lost custody because of it. But kids felt desperation for that feeling of home. So deeply, I could see it in their eyes.
I think of the boy with scars from burns. Burns from a father that he desperately wanted to go back to. Burns that caused him to lash out at adults and children around him, filled with anger, scars beyond his surface. Often running away from the school. I can still remember the sound of his footsteps racing in the hall as he ran.
I see the faces of the kids lost. To senseless crimes. To never grow up. To have life stolen from them. Stolen hope. A seventeen year old’s photo meant to go on a graduation announcement, but now a memorial photo instead.
I remember the homelessness. No place to sleep. No parents to contact, because there was no place to call home. Constant instability and the child needing something to hold on to. Because learning to read was secondary to survival. Always.
I see survival. Not grit or courage developed through a flashy school character program with brightly colored words hung on walls. Grit and courage developed through necessity. Through experiences. Experiences that would make most of us give up.
Children growing up with lead in their homes that poisoned their bodies and brains permanently. Babies born addicted to drugs, that curved their learning development for the rest of their lives. A culture where school is not the first priority because true survival and basic needs are.
So when I look at a burned out Quik Trip on the news, I am not so quick to judge. Or even to pretend I understand. But I am quick to remember. Because I see the faces of kids. I see that this is a neighborhood. There are kids who call Ferguson home. Kids seeing their parents, aunts, uncles fighting. Tear gas. Kids joining the fight themselves. Kids surrounded by violence. Immersed in it. Who cannot change the channel or read a different page. War on their streets. Kids that couldn’t start school last week because of the turmoil around them.
And I wonder if we can all do better. More empathy and less judgement. See Ferguson with our hearts instead of a video of a burned out QuikTrip. Because beyond that convenience store, there are people. Homes. Hearts.
And that should mean something to us all.
