Policy Violence

Matthew 24:44 – So you also must be ready; for the Son of Humanity is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

“So you also must be ready.” This seems to contradict what I said last time, yet, ‘ready’ here does not mean constant vigilance. We cannot know the future, and we cannot successfully predict it either. The Son of Humanity is coming when we won’t be expecting it. So then, how to be ready?

By doing the Lord’s work. Following him means doing as he did: healing the sick, freeing people from the prisons of their minds, speaking out against the oppression of those who were poor and vulnerable. I want to focus on that last item. The oppression Jesus denounced was coming from the Romans rulers but also from the Jewish leaders, both of whom had reasons to keep the poor from getting out of poverty. The Reverend Doctor William J. Barber, III uses the term “policy violence” to describe this situation. 

Policy violence is violence done to people as a result of laws or policies written by the leadership of the company, city, state, country, or other community in which we live. We often think of violence in purely physical terms. However, if someone were to keep you from leaving a situation, would you consider that violence? What about abusive words from a boss? Sexual words from a boss or other unwelcome sexual advances? If a woman is being emotionally abused and she shares it with a friend, she often hears, “well, at least he’s not hitting you” among other, similar platitudes. But all of these acts are violent, whether there is physical violence or not. 

Policy violence is harder to detect, because the people passing these laws, regulations, and executive orders almost never have to see the people they are hurting, or even killing. AG Barr stating that people should not expect cops to help them if they don’t treat them with respect is policy violence. Donald signing an executive order defining what Jewish means is policy violence. The Border Patrol not letting doctors into the detention camps on a mission of mercy to administer flu shots to unlawfully detained refugees is policy violence. The existence of those camps is policy violence. Laws against abortion are policy violence. Not expanding Medicaid to ensure your people have health insurance is policy violence. Relaxing the compliance rules on the ADA is policy violence. Withdrawing from the climate change accords is policy violence. Commending or defending police officers for killing black suspects or even firing officers who don’t is policy violence. Not responding to the epidemic of mass shootings in America, or merely responding with thoughts and prayers, is policy violence.

The term policy violence reminds us that politics has real life effects. Nothing is ever “just politics;” ever. The Republicans in this past decade have shown how little they care about the people they are supposed to represent. They are the party that is currently committing policy violence. Far from commending them, as they seem to think, I suspect Jesus would speak out against such violence, just as he did against Herod. As Christians, we should be pushing back against this shit every day. I’ve listed ways to resist before so I’m not going to now. I’ll simply end with this: We don’t know when Jesus will return. He has asked us to be ready. I can think of no better way of being ready than by loving others by denouncing the policy violence of this administration. Because, Jesus is also here on earth in the form of refugees seeking safety, Black people just going about their business, people experiencing disability or chronic illness, people experiencing homelessness, people in need in so many ways. Be ready, Jesus will appear to you when you least expect it; probably sometime today.

B