Black Lives Matter in Kalispell Montana [reposted with photos]

My daughter and I attended the Justice for George Floyd/Black Lives Matter demonstration in Kalispell, MT yesterday. The organizers’ Facebook page

warned that members of several armed militia groups would also be there.

We both wondered what would happen.

Kalispell demonstrations are always limited to a public park at the end of main street cutting through the city center. The organizers applauded how cooperative the local police department had been in helping to plan the event. As a result, we were all instructed not to bring signs with any type of derogatory, anti-police messages.

Instead, the organizers announced, the demonstration’s intended message was “unity.”

“Unity with whom for what?,” I asked myself.

o, Kendra and I are going to demonstrate against police brutality in a country where unarmed African-Americans are 5 x more likely than white Americans to be shot and killed by police. The organizers have agreed with the local police department to restrict the protest to the police-approved section of the public park, where the police have also decided that we will experience “unity” with heavily armed members of local militia groups.

Let freedom ring.

On the positive side, I was happy to see the largest turnout for any protest I have yet attended in Kalispell.

The Sunday morning paper estimated there were at least 1,000 people in attendance — including, of course, our semiautomatic rifle-toting, American flag waving, self-appointed, “don’t tread on me” guardians.

A small group of armed cowboys walked through the crowd carrying American flags and yellow signs calling people to repent and believe in Jesus. At one point, as they approached me I loudly reminded them that Jesus is not white.

While my fellow protesters got the point and laughed, the gang of gun slinger

patriot-evangelists remained totally oblivious to the mockery they were making of the gospel they came to promote.

I took time out periodically to talk with the militia members. I picked the guy with the biggest rifle and asked him why he was here? What was the group’s goal in attending this protest?

Each one repeated the same response. I got the impression that they had all been briefed on how to answer questions from the public. “We are here to protect you,” they said.

I probed further.

“We don’t want to see the kind of looting and property destruction in our city that we see everywhere else these protests happen. We especially don’t want anyone defacing our veterans’ memorial,” referring to a large statue near the street.

“But,” I would say, “There is a large police presence here already. They would stop people from defacing the statue. Did the police ask for your help?”

“No. We just volunteered,” I was told.

The mass of demonstrators would periodically chant “Black Lives Matter”

while receiving a chorus of horns honking in agreement from cars passing by.

But each time we chanted “Black Lives Matter,” the militia members waved their flags more aggressively and took up a counter-chant, usually “USA! USA!” or sometimes “White Lives Matter!”

I took another break, approached a chanting militiaman and asked why he did that. Why did he respond to Black Lives Matter with USA? How was his a counterpoint to ours?

“Well,” he said. “This is America. And in America everyone is equal.”

“But I still don’t understand,” I said. “Why can’t you say Black Lives Matter with us, if everyone here is equal?”

Well, you guessed it. With that the racist damn broke. I was now listening to a heated  monologue about how “black people bring all their problems on themselves.”

It was impossible to get a word in edgewise, so I thanked him for his time and said goodbye.

As Kendra and I left the park later that evening, we talked about what we had learned. It was evident that everyone carrying a handgun and a rifle were devotees of Fox News. They had never seen any of the abundant video footage of peaceful demonstrations all across the country, nor had they seen the gangs of police attacking innocent protesters.

They had all arrived believing that every “liberal” demonstration was a riot-in-

waiting. They stood guard believing that were it not for their armed presence, Kalispell would have been the next city victimized by looting liberals run riot.

I wish I could say that I feel encouraged this morning after Kalispell’s largest (maybe first?) Black Lives Matter demonstration. But I don’t.

I fear that America’s deepening divisions will never be bridged, much less mended, as everyone remains comfortably ensconced in their preferred information bubble. Between the alternate realities of Fox News and MSNBC (not to mention the others), our segmented mass media has destroyed the possibility of any truly national conversation.

We don’t live in the same world. We live in different worlds, different universes separated by contrary “facts,” alternate realities that too many of us meekly accept without challenge, investigation, or alternate, independent thinking.

It’s too easy to grab another beer in a self-assured, reaffirming world where confirmation bias goes unrecognized. Not a one of my armed conversation partners would believe that the vast majority of the nation’s recent protests were peaceful, that the looting was marginal — graphic but marginal.

And why should they? After all, Fox News told them otherwise.

I am too old to be surprised by racism. But it is still depressing to hear the stream of ignorant words pour from the mouth of a man immediately in front of me. I can’t imagine what it must be like for African-Americans to repeatedly hear from ill-informed, prejudiced lips that all their problems are of their own making.

Sure, we all make many of our own problems. But asymmetrical police brutality is NOT one of them.

How often can any person tolerate being told that when the police attack you, kneel on your neck, and choke the life out of you, it is because something is wrong with you; that you create your own problems? That if you were a better citizen, the police would not be murdering your friends and family at 5 x the rate of everyone else?

Racism is endemic to the human heart. I saw that again last night. We will never be rid of it till Jesus comes.

Sadly, the young ensemble of armed patriots qua evangelists provided vivid witness to the fact that “confessing and repenting of sin” is no guarantee of a transformed heart or a renewed Christ-like mind.