Don’t forget

Twenty-two years ago, thousands of protestors flooded the streets of South Central Los Angeles, Calif. Days earlier, a jury had reached a verdict in a case brought against four police officers accused of brutally beating Rodney King, a black man pulled to the side of the road for speeding. The violence was captured on video which depicted excessive force on the part of the officers; after an initial striking, an incapacitated King was beaten with batons and kicked numerous times.None of this swayed the jury to convict. All four officers were acquitted.

Rage, grief, pain, frustration; emotions were extreme and riots in Los Angeles quickly turned violent. Cory Booker, now a New Jersey senator, wrote in an opinion piece as an undergraduate at Stanfordat the time, “I’m struggling to be articulate, loquacious, positive, constructive, but for the first time in so long, I have lost control of my emotions.”

In 2014, these words still ring true.

It’s hard to remain optimistic when 22 years breed little change. Rodney King, Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice — we have seen the same cases over and over again for decades, the same dangerous mix of racism and law enforcement’s state-sanctioned ability to use force, the same broken justice system that lets police officers — most often white — walk free but sentences others — most often black men — to life in jail for nonviolent drug crimes.

Last Thursday, a federal civil rights investigation into the Cleveland Police Department for the past two yearsunearthed a record of gross misuse of force against black men. From pepper spraying and tasering subjects who were already being restrained, to kicking a man so badly he later had to be treated for a broken bone in his face, the violence catalogued in the report was heartbreaking.

Twenty-two years, and police brutality against black men is still making headlines.

As disheartening, demoralizing and dehumanizing as these defeats are, now is not the time to give up. It’s time to ask how we, Princeton students, can institute meaningful change. How can we fix a broken law enforcement and criminal justice system that continues to be infected with bias and racism?

This question can’t be answered succinctly or definitively. Student opinions diverge on how to respond to the Brown case; in an opinion column published in The Daily Princetonian on Dec. 9, Newby Parton expressed his reluctance to participate in student protests because he was “not angry at the grand jury’s verdict in the Michael Brown case.” The Brown case has been a polarizing issue on campus, and the details of precisely what happened may never be known. However, I would urge students to remember, regardless of their impressions of the Ferguson decision, that Brown does not stand alone. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’sLegal Defense Fund recently posted a series of tweets with the names of 76 unarmed black men and women who were killed in police custody in the past 15 years. The misuse of violence in the Brown case wasn’t an isolated incident. Rather, the Brown case was one of many instances of unjustified police brutality directed towards black Americans.

Other pockets of students sympathetic to the protest’s message question its practical implications. How will protesting directly contribute to change?

To these students, I would say not to underestimate the value of peacefully vocalizing anger. Do not underestimate the value of nonviolent demonstrations. Do not forget the tremendous steps forward made in this country inspired in large part by the student-led protests during the civil rights movement. Even more recently, we’ve seen the powerful impact protests have had on immigration reform.

Powerful systemic change begins with a transformation of public sentiment; protests work to galvanize communities. Protests energize groups and mobilize leaders. They increase visibility; Princeton protests have already attracted media coverage. For some, seeing like-minded students stand together in protest helps heal the pain of senseless violence.

And perhaps, most importantly, they keep us angry.

Whether or not you attended the protest, what’s most important is to stay fired up and engaged. We must not become desensitized to these injustices; we must remain incensed. We must stay vigilant and continue to press and challenge authorities, the justice department, local officials, parents, teachers and friends to stand up.

At Princeton, we learn values we will take with us into our future careers; let one of those values be persistence. We develop standards that will influence how we approach problems; let one of those standards be an unwavering demand for fairness and accountability. We refine our sense of justice that will impact whether or not we tolerate unwarranted violence; let that sense of justice burn against systematic oppression. We are granted resources that allow us to reach for the stars, to be the top of whatever profession we specialize in; let’s use that power to avidly demand reform.

Don’t forget, Princeton. Let’s not let another 22 years pass without change.

Julia Case-Levine is a freshman from New York, N.Y. She can be reached at juliacc@princeton.edu.