When “Keeping the Peace” Means Getting Left Behind
- Jordan
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
What Happened at the Indiana 50501 Protest, and the History We Still Refuse to Learn From
A few days ago in Indiana, something happened that should force all of us to rethink the way we show up, speak out, and protect each other.
At a 50501 protest, a man in a black truck tried to drive down a street that had been blocked off by demonstrators. When he realized he couldn’t get through, he got out and started shoving people — putting his hands on women standing near the edge of the crowd. He didn’t come to talk. He came looking for a fight.
One of the men in the group stepped in to stop him and was met with the same violence. In response, the protester threw a headbutt. The altercation could have ended there — a brief flash of conflict, no weapons, and no lasting harm.
Instead, the man ran back to his truck and returned holding a rifle.
He had every chance to walk away, but he chose to come back with a gun.
That’s how fast things shift — from shouting to a crowd staring down the barrel of a firearm.
Police arrived, arrested the man, and then released him. Their reasoning? They believed he was acting in self-defense.
Yes, really. The man who escalated the conflict. The man who went to retrieve a weapon. The man who brought a gun back to a protest. That’s the person they believed. According to at least one protester, the man pointed his rifle at her husband. Police didn’t believe her. They believed him.
This wasn’t a spontaneous flash protest. It was planned by 50501, a group that has repeatedly emphasized its coordination with local police. They’ve made it a priority to keep their events “peaceful” and disarmed. No firearms. No exceptions.
They believed that coordination would keep people safe.
But when actual violence broke out, the people they trusted to maintain that peace didn’t protect them. They didn’t believe them. They didn’t defend them. They defended the man who escalated the situation and brought a gun into a crowd.
So we’re left to ask: What was the point of working with the police? What was the purpose of disarming? Who did those decisions serve?
Because this is exactly what many of us have warned about for years: a disarmed community, standing face to face with someone armed and aggressive, with nothing to fall back on except hope — and each other.
Let’s be clear. This wasn’t a misunderstanding. The man wasn’t confused or overwhelmed. He didn’t feel threatened. He made a series of choices. He chose to turn onto that street. He chose to get out of his truck. He chose to put his hands on people. And when someone fought back, he chose to come back with a gun.
For some people, this is the scenario they wait for — provoke a group into reacting, escalate, and then claim “self-defense” while pointing a weapon. It’s a script. And the system plays its part.
Now imagine if the protester who headbutted him had drawn a firearm to defend the crowd. Imagine if anyone else had.
We already know what would’ve happened. They’d be in jail, or dead.
Self-defense doesn’t mean the same thing for everyone. The law doesn’t treat all people equally. And the more we disarm ourselves to make the state comfortable, the more we make ourselves dependent on systems that have never treated us as worth protecting.
The Lesson We Still Refuse to Learn
This dynamic isn’t new. We’ve seen it before, and in far more devastating ways.
Take the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia in 1985. A Black liberation group, MOVE had been clashing with police and city officials for years. They lived communally, they were outspoken, and yes, they were armed — but what they experienced wasn’t law enforcement. It was a siege.
The city dropped a literal bomb on their rowhouse. The fire killed 11 people, including 5 children. It burned 61 homes. Police and firefighters stood by and let it happen.
MOVE had said from the beginning that the city was not interested in peace — they were interested in control. And even in death, they were proven right.
That wasn’t a warzone. That was a neighborhood.
That wasn’t a battlefield. That was a city making an example out of people who refused to comply.
The lesson from MOVE should have been clear: when you disarm or de-escalate under the assumption that the state will protect you, you’re trusting something that has proven — time and again — that its first priority is control, not care. That it believes force is a form of order. That peace only matters if it’s on their terms.
Disarmament Is Not Peacekeeping
50501’s decision to work with police wasn’t just a strategic error — it created the illusion of protection. And when that illusion broke, the people who trusted them were left vulnerable.
This isn’t about shaming people trying to do good work. And it’s not about blaming the people who showed up. We should support every person who stands up, speaks out, and puts themselves in the street for what’s right. It matters that they were there.
But it also matters to say this: protests like these — disarmed, centered on respectability, coordinated with police — are rarely effective on their own. They are often designed to be easy to ignore, easy to control, and easy to dismiss when things go wrong. They rarely shift power. They rarely shift risk. And they leave those who show up believing they are safe when they are not.
We aren’t saying don’t go. We’re saying: go with clarity. Go knowing that strategy matters. Go knowing that safety doesn’t come from compliance — it comes from community. It comes from each other.
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
— Audre Lorde
Lorde’s words aren’t just theory. They’re instruction. Appealing to power doesn’t stop violence. Appeasing systems built on control won’t protect you. And asking people to show up unarmed while others are ready to shoot isn’t peace — it’s preparation for sacrifice.
We cannot keep building movements around the idea that if we’re polite enough, if we’re careful enough, if we’re compliant enough, we’ll be spared.
That is not how power works.
Real safety is built from the ground up. It’s built in mutual protection. It’s built in standing with each other, not standing down. It’s built by refusing to play by rules that were never meant to protect us.
If you’re going to protest injustice, do it knowing that the state doesn’t offer justice — it offers containment. And if someone tells you to show up unarmed “for peace,” ask them what happens when peace fails.
Because history already gave us that answer.
If it’s not us looking out for us, it’s no one.
And if it’s not solidarity, it’s not safety.
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