Last night in Downtown Oakland, supported by dozens of lay Buddhist practitioners, Buddhist monks, and interfaith allies, nine people sat in silent meditation, blocking the doors of the Marriott Hotel, which will host Urban Shield this week. Urban Shield is a militarized police expo and SWAT Team training where police forces from around the country come to learn about and purchase militarized weapons that they will then use on citizenry, as we saw so vividly in Ferguson recently.
My friend, spiritual teacher T. Thorn Coyle, has written beautifully about the action in which she and I both participated. I am grateful for her articulation of our purpose there. Our struggle, as we say in my own tradition, is not with human beings but with powers and principalities.
Having been a police reporter and observing their behavior first hand, such passive resistance will have as much effect as it would have on the Nazis.