from around the country to march in the streets of my new city.
“If we don’t get no justice, then you don’t get no peace.” I had heard the chant in protests in other cities. Before I came to St. Louis, I had marched with young Black activists in Washington after the killing of Trayvon Martin, and again after the acquittal of his killer. But I had never heard as many voices shouting the words. I had never heard the words chanted with such conviction, such a sense that the stakes were so immediate. Something changed in Ferguson. Something was uncovered. The words were spoken with new urgency.
I’ve preached sermons about the poetic possibilities I find in this chant. The shortened version of “If we don’t get no justice, then you don’t get no peace” is simply “No justice; no peace.” I have said from the pulpit, more than once, that when I hear the words, “No justice; no peace,” I imagine an alternate spelling: “Know justice; know peace.” The threat becomes a prescription. “If you want peace, work for justice”7—those words from Pope Paul VI were quoted often in my undergraduate courses on theology. I became used to making my own translation for the chant. I was comfortable with my role as a preacher. I knew how to spiritualize protest.
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