The city felt different as if emerging from isolation made the sun feel warmer and it’s light seem brighter. The silence was different too. Street lights changed for no one, parking lots empty; storefronts closed and abandoned. No one seen or heard, a silence that felt out of place and time.
The light bounced off speckles on the sidewalk as we passed boarded-up windows and empty stoplights. I kneeled with one hand reaching down and lifted a glittering brass casing. From here, I could see how they littered the streets before me. From here I could see the broken glass, the sprayed words, and signs left behind. From here I began to hear the echoes of a city on fire, the echoes of humanity calling for change.
The night was filled with light and noise. Shadows stood together, fists closed, and raised. Voices breaking from exhaustion, breaking from emotion; yet strong, loud and pleading to be heard. The voices demanded justice, peace, and life. In those voices were the names of brothers and sisters, names of those who cannot speak, those who cannot breathe, and those who should not have been taken away. The city streets were filled with cries for a better future, cries for a reconciled past, and cries for equal love unfelt but desired. Friends and strangers coming together not for the first time but with the hope of being the last. The last demonstrators who would have to stop everything to fight a system convinced it isn’t broken. Ordinary heroes who have everything to lose and so much more to gain. Ordinary heroes who see the horrors of the past honored in bronze sculptures and know that moving forward first starts by acknowledging the truth of the past. An extraordinary display of unity, respect, and the need to change who we are, first in the heart and the home, and then who we are as a society.
The rhythm of an organized people chanting together began to fade as a louder, stronger force marched in line, shields in hand and armed with batons, pepper spray, and nonlethal artillery. A force whose days are filled with nearness to death, crime, and sadness. A force whose dark days are carried home and hidden away. At first, they stopped and stood as if an unmovable wall, but that did not last. A sudden barrage of orders and demands dismantled the rhythm of peaceful assembly. Suddenly the night was filled with red and blue, the air filled with clouds that burn and bright flashes that left only screams. Some stood, some ran, some fell with blood smeared across their face, others were beaten, pushed, and dragged away under the pretense of law without order. Punishment without crime.
Violence met the voices; some retaliated in kind, some in just, but the noise grew louder, the smoke thicker and fires separated the voices who once stood united as one. The rhythm of signing voices gave way to broken windows, raging fires, and desperate peacekeepers who could not be heard in the cacophony. Desperate peacekeepers who did not want their message of justice and love and equality clouded. Desperate because those charged with keeping the peace failed, desperate because the heroes in blue become lost underneath soldiers dressed in black, desperate because as their riot gear shielded them from hurt and discovery, there was no one left to shield the voices. So the voices fell and fled.

I kneeled quietly, the street beneath me watching the sun reflect off the remnants of bullet casings and glass and I listened to the echoes of the night.

I listened to the echoes of voices

and knew they would not stay silent.