Our Past: On Trial

It’s a cold, grey and wet weekend in Chicago. This is normal. It’s October, what do you expect? My Dad
used to walk around the house lamenting these kind of days when I was a kid. At random moments he
would simply bellow out in a loud and deliberate voice “cold, grey, wet October!” Us kids would be like,
“yeah, what’s your point?” He didn’t have one. I think he was just moved by certainty of Chicago autumn.
It always came. It was always cold. It was alway grey. It was always wet. It was part of life in Chicago.
Clearly, it still is.

Cold, Grey, Wet October!

In the 1980s and 90s I grew up with a lot of certainties. Some simple, like “the Cubs and Sox will never
win the World Series” and “you don’t put ketchup on hotdogs.” Other certainties were more profound like
“boys will be boys” and “snitches get stitches”.

Well… the Cubs and the Sox have won the World Series and I don’t really eat hot dogs anymore.

You can see where my loyalties lie...

This week those other certianities from our past were on trial. As exhausting as this week was for
Chicagoans, for Americans, I believe it was a turning point.

Brett Kavanaugh has been confirmed into the Supreme Court but I believe that the “boys will be boys”
certainty from my childhood has taken a significant blow. In response to the grilling of Brett Kavanaugh,
the President said it’s:

“a very scary time to be a young man in America.”

I agree. If your a young man that expects to do whatever you want, whenever you want, with impunity,
then yes, it’s a scary time. And it’s about time.

Snitches may still get stitches but it matters not when there’s a video. On Friday, former Chicago Police
Officer Jason Van Dyke was convicted of 2nd degree murder. Simply put, when I was a kid he would not
have been. The report the police put together told a different story of how Laquan McDonald was killed.
In years past that story was “the story.” One narrative and “snitches get stitches.” This time a jury of his
peers looked at all the evidence, heard all the narratives and rendered a verdict that they found just. I
don’t see this as a anti-police verdict. I see it as a pro-democracy verdict. And it’s about time.

So, what do we do now? We can count on October being cold gray and wet but the other certainties of
our past were put on trial and they are crumbling. The roof is leaking and the foundation is unstable. We
can’t go for the quick fix. We have done that before. We’ve been doing it for years and the problems
always come back.

We need to rebuild, but how?

I think if we can remember one thing we’ll be okay.  

We didn’t build this crumbing house!

Mistakenly, many of us have tried to maintain it but we didn’t build it. It was built during different times by
different people. The problem is that they were thinking about themselves when they built this house for
us. We can’t make that same mistake.

One of my favorite prayers is actually a sermon by a priest I’ve never met, named Father Ken Untener.
The title is “Prophets of a Future Not Our Own”. In this prayer Father Unterner urges us to remember
that the work we do now is not for us. It’s for those that come after us. Too often we get caught up in
honoring the past and get selfish about what we want in the present. He urges us to: “step back and
take a long view.”

All Americans, all Chicagoans need to do this right now. We can’t rebuild in a day or in a week or in a
year. But we can take small steps now and remember that it's not about us. The world we build now,
after these trials will be the world our children inherit from us. What kind of certainties do we want to
cement into the foundation?