My 2025 A to Z Challenge theme is activism. I’ve been a Black Lives Matter activist for over a decade. I’m not an expert. I do have experience to share and I’m hoping to learn from your experiences, too. We’re all in this together.

If you’re white, take a deep breath. I’ve got a rant, but I promise that I’ll bring it around to a more positive place in the end.

Let’s remind ourselves that we all grew up in a racist society and none of that happened with our consent or approval. We absorbed racist messages before we were old enough to build any defense against them.

If you live in the St. Louis area, check out the Witnessing Whiteness program from the YWCA.

Those racist messages got lodged in the back of our brains. The work of anti-racism for white people includes the work of ferreting out those thoughts out and countering them.  I’ve been engaged in that work, with some success, since the 2008 Kirkwood City Hall shooting.  And, I still have thoughts that ambush me.

One of those messages that we white people were taught, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, was that black people are inherently violent and dangerous.

I want to write about something that I see today that is subtle, even unconscious, for most people. It’s something I can reflect on since I saw more about what happened behind the scenes during the 2014-2015 Ferguson uprising than most white people because of where I live and because of the connections that I made beginning in 2008.

What I’m seeing, now, are protests that are advertised in advance or described afterwards as “peaceful.”

Here’s are some things that I observed in 2014.

The protests were as peaceful as the police response.

The police response was peaceful during the events when most of the protestors were white. They blocked streets and kept traffic moving safely around marchers.

Protests were more likely to be peaceful in the daytime than at night. Police seemed more afraid of losing control after dark. That became a big problem in the winter months when the days are short and people didn’t get home from work to engage in protest until after the sun went down.

Our 2025 protests are in the daytime with crowds of mostly white people. We shouldn’t be bragging about how peaceful they are as if we white people are somehow doing this better than black people in 2014. We aren’t. We just don’t look as scary to the police.

Aside from the inappropriate boastfulness, I think this is great news.

Protest is an excellent use of our white privilege. If we can make these protests larger and larger without inciting police violence against us, that’s all good.

I feel a similar way about the age of the people that we see protesting. I’ve seen some calls for younger people to be involved, but many of us can remember when young Vietnam war protestors were the target of police violence.

Police officers will be disinclined to be violent against people who look like their grandparents.

My reaction to the term “nonviolent” is slightly more nuanced than to the word “peaceful.”

I saw way too many wagging white fingers that scolded Black Lives Matter protestors, saying they should be nonviolent like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We willfully forget that the work of the Civil Rights Movement wasn’t seen as nonviolent when it was happening. The challenge to white authority didn’t feel polite or peaceful or nonviolent to the people whose authority was being assaulted. It was only later that we looked back and embraced the term “nonviolent.”

On the other hand, I am hopeful about this video that I shared earlier in the month. A historical look at protests around the world suggests that nonviolence is the most effective tactic for protest, putting aside any moral attachment to it.

One of the reasons that nonviolence works as a tactic is because more people are physically capable of participation. I love seeing senior citizens in their camp chairs holding signs that say things like “PROTECT DUE PROCESS” or “NO KINGS.”

If our front line is filled with older white people, like me, maybe a militarized police response won’t materialize, even if black people and young people decide to join us. This is a moment for older white people to be on the leading edge. My vision and hope is to build a large, diverse movement that propels change by using our privileges for the good of everyone.