Peacemaking beyond war

Camassia and Verbum Ipsum are blogging about just war, but my mind has been on how pacifism, or peacemaking, relates to situations beyond our nation at war.  Specifically, violence in inner cities.

You might have noticed I'm obsessed with The Wire.  I was reading an online forum and someone said (I'm paraphrasing): "I have so much respect for this show that I want to become involved in the issues that David Simon writes about so passionately.  Otherwise, I'm just a couch potato."  And Simon himself has said: "THE WIRE is making an argument about what institutions — bureaucracies, criminal enterprises, the cultures of addiction, raw capitalism even — do to individuals. It is not designed purely as an entertainment. It is, I'm afraid, a somewhat angry show."

There are some ways in which Simon portrays this fictional world of Baltimore as one without the hope of redemption - no room for the Cross or Resurrection (as I quoted in a previous blog.)  The power that these institutions - these powers and principalities - have over individuals is so great that there is no way to break free of them.  And in a city where the actual murder rate is outrageous (link is old but the summary gives you a sense of the article) one can surely see why it might seem that this is true.

But as Christians, we believe that there is a path to freedom, found not through violence but through the man who submitted to violence and broke the power of sin and death. 

You'll notice in the article that most of the murder victims are criminals.  Does this mean the answer is: well, stop selling drugs and murdering each other.  I think that's as naive as Just Say No.  Simon says in this interview:

"For 35 years, you’ve systematically deindustrialized these cities. You’ve rendered them inhospitable to the working class, economically. You have marginalized a certain percentage of your population, most of them minority, and placed them in a situation where the only viable economic engine in their hypersegregated neighborhoods is the drug trade. Then you’ve alienated them further by fighting this draconian war in their neighborhoods, and not being able to distinguish between friend or foe and between that which is truly dangerous or that which is just illegal. And you want to sit across the table from me and say ‘What’s the solution?’ and get it in a paragraph? The solution is to undo the last 35 years, brick by brick. How long is that going to take? I don’t know, but until you start it’s only going to get worse."

So basically, we have war zones in our cities, and the government thinks the answer is a just war in the form of "the war against drugs."  I am not excusing individual culpability of those involved in the drug trade, but I can't excuse our sitting by and doing nothing constructive, either.  Look, I'm not even sure what something constructive would be.  But I feel sometimes as if we just don't care, since it's far away enough that it doesn't really affect most of us. 

Of course, that depends on who the "us" is.  As Christians, we have an expansive definition of "us."  So what in the world would "blessed are the peacemakers" look like in this situation?  I'm sure that many inner city churches have great programs that work to bring peace to these neighborhoods.  Do we just let them do that by themselves?  I'm not advocating comfortable middle-class suburbanite do-gooders running into the inner cities thinking we can save everyone.  I'm asking, if we truly are brothers and sisters in Christ, can't we do more than watch the bad news on TV and shake our heads.

I know plenty of people do more.  I recruit volunteers to tutor and mentor kids in Chicago.  I have some truly dedicated volunteers who care deeply about these children.  I'm afraid that there's a sense in which that's just putting a band aid on a problem with many, many facets, some of which are systematic failures, as Simon said in the interview.  Is the "war against drugs" only making it worse?  Is it unjust?