by 
I drove to the gym this morning. I turned left onto the main road, taking the turn with cars behind me. A woman nearby was finishing her walk up a steep hill. She was looking down as she walked but raised her gaze to mine as I approached. I steered my car around the corner where she was. There was a point in which my car and her body came as close to each other as (I hope) they will ever be. She seemed surprised by my vehicle! It might have been the trajectory or the speed as I came around the bend. But in that split second, I saw her flinch.
The stranger’s reaction reminded me that we’re all surrounded by these hulking giants. Tons of steel, plastic, and rubber pass us by every day. They’re controlled by people exactly like us, sometimes distracted or preoccupied. Some move along with code and technology that most people don’t understand. That flinch reminded me that cars are pretty much newcomers on the scale of human history. Most of us have known them all our lives. But what we’d recognize as a car is less than 150 years old.
The modern day police force is even younger. Jill Lepore writes that the police chief in Berkeley was the first to turn his police force into a military. This was in 1909. Other city departments soon followed suit. What once were slave catching posses expanded their focus to confront a “lawless” public. The people they target most are the same people they’ve always gone after. Police kill more Black people and Native Americans than any other groups. They’ve done this since before modern policing even existed. How can we ever hope to reform something created to do exactly what it’s doing?
nothing has to stay the way it is
No matter how the world looks right now, it doesn’t have to be that way forever. Things that seem durable can still crumble. As an old millennial, there are plenty of things affecting my daily life that are hardly older than I am. FICO credit scores began in 1989. Prices for housing didn’t become astronomical until the 1990s.
Many of what we take for granted for also came with significant fighting. Civil rights movements span generations and nations. Black emancipation, women’s rights, queer and trans liberation are all ongoing projects. Labor struggles brought us 40-hour workweeks and workplace protections. Most people take these accomplishments for granted. Other gains have eroded away after the fight seemed over.
These efforts show us that it’s possible to build and fight for real progress. It’s possible to rewrite the rules and structures of the world around us. We don’t have to live with it. We don’t have to accept that this is the way it will always be.
I can’t stop thinking about the murder of Sonya Massey in her own kitchen. It’s not fair that she and so many others have died at the hands of police. We spend $135 billion dollars each year on state and local police. The funding that goes into cop cities around the country means we are paying for a threat that looms over us. We’re sending billions to Israel to murder Palestinians trying to survive.
This morning I wondered about what stress must be like for someone who is flinching all the time. It feels like we’re at the mercy of forces larger than us. I know change is hard. But we don’t have to go through with atrocities just because we’re used to them.
We fight to improve the world around us. We fight to hold onto the progress we’ve made so far. We don’t have to accept it. We can’t keep ignoring it.
josh
my name is josh martinez. i have always loved trying to understand systems, and the systems that built those systems. i spend a lot of time thinking about how to get there from here.
i'm the founder and a consultant at Future Emergent.
say hello: josh@bethefuture.space
