On Friday, the city of Dallas was in mourning, and so was I.
We lost five police officers. They were gunned down at a peaceful protest on Thursday night that took place just a few blocks from where I live. I was at that protest too.
So was my friend Angela. She stayed longer than I did, leaving right before the shots rang out. “Peaceful crowd. Sprits lifted and prepped for action. Sad to see it turn out like this,” she later wrote on Facebook.
Everyone is sad to see it turn out like this. The city planned a prayer vigil for noon on Friday and I decided to go and maybe to stay until the end this time.
I walked to Thanks-Giving Square, where the vigil was held, down a street lined with police officers in their dress blue uniforms. They were pleasant to everyone who greeted them. Some people took pictures. I took a photo of some people posing with the police too.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, and others in the crowd expressed condolences as well.
I imagine it feels, for the Dallas police, as if a member of their family has died.
That’s how it felt for me, watching the terrible news earlier in the week, hearing about Alton B. Sterling and Philando Castile. And how it felt after we lost Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland and the long list of others.
I walked to the center of the square and stood on the steps next to a man dressed in a business suit. It was hot — 96 degrees. I drank a bottle of water but he didn’t open his. The speakers, seemingly every dignitary and politician from the area, were lined up under a circular plaque that read: “Come into his courts with praise. Psalm 100.” We bowed our heads in prayer.
“Were you there last night?” I whispered to the man in the suit.
“Yeah, I am one of the organizers. I’m James.”
We whispered back and forth to each other between and during the speeches.
“The crowd is different today,” he said.
I nodded. There were many more people, maybe 1,000. It appeared as if the majority of them were white. The atmosphere was different. The voice of Black Lives Matter had become a silent whisper between James and me.
“They’re blaming us,” he said.
At one point, a speaker said the answer was to love one another. The speaker said, I want everybody here to find someone in the crowd who is different from you and shake his hand and give him a hug.
James and I exchanged glances. Several white people were lined up against the wall to my left. They hugged each other as they clasped hands. A few of them looked at me, and I awkwardly shook their hands and hugged them. I didn’t see James hug anyone, and I wished that I hadn’t either. My Southern politeness kicked in, even though I always find a forced hug uncomfortable.
During the vigil, a parade of dignitaries spoke: preachers of every faith, City Council members, the police chief. Friday belonged to the city officials and the necessary public mourning. But Thursday night, before the shooting, the Black Lives Matter protests belonged to us, the people who were mourning two senseless deaths at the hands of the police in Louisiana and Minnesota.
The police chief, David Brown, took his turn speaking. He was the hero of the hour. He had captured the villain who killed his officers. He was proud of his accomplishments and the audience was moved by his speech. He told us how most of the time, wearing the police uniform in Dallas, he hears negative comments and gets complaints. But it felt good today, it gave him some measure of comfort, to hear the words: “Thank you.”
The crowd then spontaneously shouted, “Thank you.”
The chant went through the crowd, all of us who had found someone different from us to hug: “Thank you.”
The chant that resonated more with me was from Thursday night.
“Enough is enough,” the crowd chanted. “Enough is enough,” I chanted along too, with the call and response, standing on the edge of the park just a few blocks from my home.
I had gone to the protest that night not only to show respect for the deceased and their families but for myself, for my well-being. It’s similar to the reason we attend funerals. I wanted to be with the bereaved so that we could lift up each other.
People young and old, black, white, Latino, were taking a stand in Dallas on Thursday night. One little boy had a sign pinned to his back with a quotation from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on it. Police officers and citizens talked and took selfies. The speakers stepped to the microphone, one by one, to speak about the horrific deaths in Louisiana and Minnesota. Their volume rose as they spoke about hope, and they finished with chants — “Enough is enough”; “No more 404,” the police code when something like this happens; “Black lives matter.” I clapped and I chanted too. But whatever I had gone to the protest for, I was feeling the opposite effect.
I decided to leave early, around 8, so I wouldn’t have to walk home in the dark. Also my phone had died.
When I was home and plugged it back in, I saw a text from my friend Angela. She told me to turn on the news.
I watched the cameras broadcasting images of the park where I had just been standing, the police officers who had been posing for selfies now under attack.
How could the peaceful demonstration I had been a part of turned to this?
I live two blocks from Baylor Hospital and I heard sirens going back and forth all night.
I was at the protest Thursday night to be lifted up out of my sadness. “Enough is enough,” we chanted. I added my voice. But it was not enough because within a couple of hours five more people were dead.
Sanderia Faye is the author of the novel Mourner’s Bench.