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By Liv Larson Andrews
As many of my friends and colleagues add their images to the “Use Me Instead” cause, I keep feeling sad. On the one hand, I am drawn to add my face. Sure, draw violence away from the vulnerable. I’m down with that. On the other hand, I’m really not down with the use of violence to meet the needs of public safety in Miami or any place.
It is wrong for police to use images of real human beings as targets. It is wrong and racist for police to use only images of people of a certain race as targets. But for those of us outside that racial group to protest only by offering our own faces instead seems to miss the bigger problem: police are trained to respond to problems with bullets.
Has not our nation been sadly marked by incident after incident of overblown violence on the part of law enforcement?
We must also observe that violence exists in our very DNA as a nation. We permit guns to ride along in shopping carts with children; why shouldn’t our police have and know how to use them too?
I think my desires for change are greater than most, and so unlikely to gain traction in any real way. I would like us all to choose to value our own lives and the lives of our neighbors so much that we decide the guns are not worth it. At least the lives of children. Can we, led by faith, led by a God who became a child, choose to value these vulnerable people entrusted into our care more than any promise of security that firearms might bring?
All of us, from parents to police, need non-violence training. But at a deeper level, we need to be freed from our blasphemous worship of guns. So, North Miami Beach Police, next door neighbors, friends, colleagues, do not use my image for target practice. Get rid of the gun in the first place.
