Here is what happens when you have the “correct” ideals which neatly fit the prevailing media narrative: You get a lengthy article by a major city’s leading newspaper dedicated to your … “protest.”
Lou Ann Merkle, a 61 year-old teacher among other things, is shaving her head with friend Sylvia Metzler as “a symbol of grievance and mourning that stretches through societies and cultures back to the Old Testament.” For what, you ask?
Because “they are weary of seeing black and brown people die in the nation’s streets.”
And you’ve probably guessed why already: They’re “upset … reading story after story of black men being killed [by police] in the street with no one being prosecuted.”
Here’s a photo of the duo, complete with a “Black Lives Matter” wall sign.
The Philadelphia Inquirer (via Philly.com) reports:
A month ago, news broke of the Senate report on CIA torture, which found that detainees were subjected to far worse treatment than had been known. To Metzler, the findings seemed like one more affront, piled upon the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y.
Metzler tossed and turned all night, then awoke at 5 a.m. with one thought: “I’m going to shave my head.”
“It went right to my heart,” Merkle said. “I thought, I have to do this. I’m upset with sitting here and reading story after story of black men being killed in the street with no one being prosecuted. And I was deeply troubled by the information in the Senate report.”
Shaving her head, she thought, would force her to surrender something beautiful and comforting, in its place creating a visual signal of distress and disagreement.
“I’m just an ordinary person,” Merkle said. “When I wake up in the morning and I don’t have a head of hair, I’m uncomfortable – but Eric Garner’s wife and children are more uncomfortable than I’ll ever be.”
Jason Del Gandio, who studies public advocacy at Temple University, says that head shaving “demonstrates, to oneself and others, that the individual is willing to take action.”
St. Joseph’s University Bible scholar Bruce Wells notes that head shaving “could be a sign of changing status,” according the Old Testament. “A captive war bride might shave her head in mourning for her lost family, a parent to grieve the loss of a child,” he says.
Merkle and Metzler will be participating in a march in downtown Philly on Monday, Martin Luther King Day. Organizers of the march say they’ll be “marching for justice, jobs, and education.”
“Specifically, they want an end to ‘stop and frisk’ police practices and creation of a powerful oversight board; a raise to $15 an hour as the minimum wage; and a fully funded, democratically run school system.”
Ah, there we go. Old school “progressive” politics. No wonder this duo got so much ink.
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