Mind Your Robots

We absolutely aren’t going to just go in and sweep out this peaceful protest just because they are occupying a space on your campus that you’d like to use for something else right now, and because of your fears that maybe this could grow to the point where it interferes with other campus activities.

—Denver police Chief Ron Thomas

I love reading the words of Denver police Chief Ron Thomas this morning. For more context, have a look at Shelly Bradbury’s reporting for The Denver Post right here. The photo is the work of Andy Cross. It was taken on the Auraria campus of the University of Colorado Denver.

The power to decree a gathering of people unlawful is quite the power. The same goes for considering the question of what is or isn’t “excessive force.” I think too of “campus activities.” Beholding a police chief draw a line with others in allege authority who seem to want him to behave inappropriately is refreshing. I’m reminded of Margaret Atwood’s saying: A word after a word after a word is power.

Generalization is fascism’s oxygen supply. Specificity cuts it off.

I see robots within robots. But I also see people within robots making distinctions. So much horror comes from people reacting fearfully to someone else’s fearful demand that something needs to be done about something someone’s supposedly doing. It’s hard to make distinctions when we feel afraid. It’s hard to think at all when we don’t feel safe.

But look, there’s Ron Thomas choosing his words with care. There’s real power in not reacting. So much comes down to one person choosing to slow the tape and see and think and, in his case, try to obey the law instead of reacting to outside pressures to debase himself and his officers. As Shelly Bradbury’s reporting indicates, Thomas learned something about reactivity and the fluidity of particular situations in 2020.

The graphic above came to me via my friend Janet Wolf. What do you see when you read through them? I see people.

Granted, I don’t know the names of all staff and students and faculty and alumnae who involve themselves in campus activities occurring at each of the institutions named above, but I know they’re all out there making decisions about what they want to see happen and what they’re willing to do about it and, perhaps in most cases, what love and self-respect will look like on any given day. My prayer for each of them (and pretty much everyone everywhere, come to think of it) is that they would have a deep sense of their own moral power at every turn.

Robot soft exorcism theory is a way not mistaking persons for the positions they feel compelled to stake out for sometimes solid and sometimes sordid reasons in our one human barnyard. You can read all about it in We Become What We Normalize or hear all about at this Yale podcast or this other Yale podcast.

Thank you, Denver police Chief Ron Thomas, for knowing your boundaries, for speaking aloud concerning your own powers of discernment, and for engaging in a singular act of robot soft exorcism within and on the periphery of your robots and the robots of others.

People, mind your robots.