Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. – Proverbs 21:2
My mom felt helpless. The scene was quickly getting chaotic. She had to protect her two children, but didn’t know what to do. She turned on her windshield wipers… but that didn’t work.
The protesters were still draped across her windshield. We were in the middle of a riot.
My older sister was so scared, she put her hands over her ears to block out the people screaming outside. I was in a fetal position – in my mother’s womb.
May 3, 1971, was my dad’s very first day of work at the Interior Department in Washington D.C. After my mom dropped him off, he ran through tear gas to get to the office and wondered, “Is this just another day in D.C.?” He had no idea that protesters would surround his family’s car a few minutes later. This would go down in history as the “May Day” protests. Thousands of anti-Vietnam War protesters would end up being arrested. My mom watched them turn over cars and dump garbage cans full of broken glass all over the streets. Two months earlier, a domestic terrorist group called the Weather Underground claimed responsibility for bombing the U.S. Capitol. One activist said, “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.”
Suddenly, my mom heard the sound of police batons knocking the rioters off our car. We were safe. “If it weren’t for God, I don’t know what would have happened to us,” she remembers thinking.
Does that chaos sound familiar? 50 years later, we are still watching violence happening across the country. The First Amendment guarantees our right to make our voices heard peacefully, but in the past few years, hundreds of protests have become violent in the name of several important issues: civil rights, election integrity, Middle East wars, coronavirus restrictions, etc. It’s heartbreaking to watch news coverage of cities burning while innocent people are pulled out of their cars and beaten unconscious in the streets. My mom feared that same thing was going to happen to us on May Day.
For so many, the goal of violence is “change.” But violence never changes hearts. In fact, it often turns public opinion against those who are violent.
When hundreds of African Americans peacefully marched in Selma, Alabama, for voting rights in 1965, they were brutally attacked by troopers. Footage of the violence shocked the nation and led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act.
One of my favorite Bible stories is from Luke 22:47-51, when Jesus heals the severed ear of the high priest’s servant. Can you imagine that servant’s reaction? In a matter of seconds, he went from wanting to arrest Jesus to receiving a loving miracle from that same man. Has there ever been a faster change of heart?
My mom ends her emails with a quote from Mother Theresa: “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” There’s no better way to climb that hill towards peace.
– Ed Doney, Writer/Videographer
