August 28, 1968
by Amy
12:10 a.m. - Lincoln Park
They were beaten. We watched them from afar. They beat the priests who gathered to protect us. Coleman asked Glasses if the priests knew what was about to happen. Glasses assured him that they did. They sent him away, and they stayed.
I turned away when it started. Everyone around us screamed. It was awful. Horrible. I saw one girl go into the bushes and vomit. It wasn't from tear gas. I, too, felt like throwing up.
They love their violence. They love it in their wars and in their movies. They don't see themselves as murderers. They have no connection to the human spirit. They all look alike because they lost their humanity. They wear the same haircut and have the same job to go home to the same wife with a different name. They kill and maim because they've lost their souls. Whatever it is that makes us all human. It no longer exists in them. They can't see others as fellow humans because they aren't human.
The pigs didn't even give the priests a chance. They beat them down until they were on their hands and knees. The medics were shocked that no one was killed. Maybe it was because the priests submitted to it. They didn't fight. I would've fought, on instinct alone. But they didn't.
It's not something I'll ever understand. I'm not that good. It's the reason I'm afraid sometimes. Because I know that inside me, there is someone who will fight back. I can't submit like they did. I don't know if I ever could.
I realize, too, that all this time we've been hoping that when people act inhumanely to each other, that they will wake up and see what they're doing. That their violence will wake them and make them see that they aren't being themselves. But I don't think that will ever happen. Evil sleeps a sound slumber, from which it will never awaken.
