The other night in my posting I wrote about how I needed to use more pictures and less words. Today I was working on pictorial presentation about Tale of Two St. Vincent de Paul Stores of the Milwaukee Council of Society contrasting the Milwaukee St. Vincent de Paul Thrift store with the one in the suburbs. The news and internet is full of videos of men and women being beat or shot by policemen, justified or not.
There was a video of Red Arrow Park where Dontre Hamilton was shot fourteen times by a police officer, but the DA said the video was not relevant to the event and will not allow the attorney for Hamilton Family see it. New camera technology has made a picture or video easily available. The other night there was a video of Californian police officer believing a white woman at scene but taking down and arresting an eight month black women also at the scene. (There were no charges brought against the black woman.)
Thinking about power of picture and video I remember back to the early spring of 1969. I was out on bond for the Milwaukee 14 action and living in an apartment on State Street which was considered the ‘skid row’ of Milwaukee at the time. There was a famous judge in Milwaukee that every spring would have the police round up the men on skid row so he could send them to the House of Correction where they could work on the farm. I had a 35 mm camera in those days and started taking pictures of police arresting men on State Street. I made sure not to interfere with the arrest but just taking still pictures was upsetting to policemen and perhaps they were more careful in arresting the men. Others also start to take pictures of men being arrested.
On eve of Easter Sunday I was walking with a few other people up State Street to attend an Easter Vigil Mass that was to be held of a Church near Casa Maria, the Catholic Worker House of Hospitality. As we were walking on State Street a police car pulled up and started and the policemen started to beat and arrest a man on the street. We did not have a camera but stood and watched the action. My companions were told to move on and I was surrounded by police officers. They started yelling at me and demanding my ID. When I got out my license, in anger, I said something like damn or hell. That was it. As soon as I said these words a ‘paddy wagon’ with the ‘tactical police squad’ pulled up and arrested me and the original man. I told my companions who were watching to go ahead to the Mass and let people know what happened. I was taken to jail and sat there till Michael Cullen, co-founder with his wife, of Casa Maria, Catholic Worker House of Hospitality, came down to jail to bailed me out. There has been a collection at the Easter Vigil Mass for my bail. Charges against me were eventually dropped. However, the lesson I learned was to make sure I have my camera, or nowadays a cell phone available, so I or someone could catch the whole scene on film.
The Coalition of and for Students of Color at Marquette University have already made a number of videos of the new Marquette police force stopping or arresting black men on campus. (The black man that was arrested was for begging or panhandling something that St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus who established Marquette, did on a regular basis.)
So we now live in an age where often our best protection is not a gun but a camera. Video shots are making a difference.
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