Brave student says loss of his eye “small collateral for the battle we’re fighting”

It was the great James Baldwin who said that: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

As cities around America went up in flames over the weekend; as righteous indignation about the cold-blooded murder of an unarmed black man gave way to lawlessness and looting; as a great nation teetered on the brink of sectional conflagration, one lionhearted young man literally faced a sea of troubles head on.

And it has cost him the sight in one eye – but not his spirit.

21-year-old Balin Brake lost his right eye on Saturday after he was struck by a tear gas cannister during George Floyd demonstrations in Indiana.

He was part of a large protest in Fort Wayne when officers started deploying tear gas and one of the canisters struck his shoe. He then turned around to see what happened and the second can hit him in the face, injuring his right eye.

“He saw [the canister] hit the ground after it hit him,” Brake’s mother, Rachel Simonis, told the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

Brake was treated by medics at the scene and then rushed to the hospital, but doctors were unable to save his eye.

Of course, Brake’s is just one of hundreds of stories of protesters clashing with authorities in recent days. And it is also true that he himself acknowledges that any adversity he faces pales next to the systemic challenges faced routinely by minority communities.

Nonetheless, Brake’s stand in Fort Wayne has captured the imagination of a country on edge as it faces the most serious civil unrest seen in over fifty years.

Brake said losing his eye was “small collateral for the battle we’re fighting.” He told the Journal Gazette that he believes white privilege is real and “if you’re not going to use it to advocate for your fellow people, then that is just wrong.”

In Brake’s view of the events, “police need policing,” and when police use tear gas, it should be aimed at the ground and “not at people’s bodies and heads.”

Sofia Rosales-Scatena, public information officer for the Fort Wayne Police Department, issued a statement Sunday denying that an officer directly targeted Brake.

“According to our officers on the ground, the protester was still in the area after commands to leave the area were given. Gas was deployed in the area and the protester bent over to pick up the canister to throw it back at officers as many others were trying to do. When he bent over, another canister was deployed in the area and that canister skipped and hit the protester in the eye. There was no deliberate deployment of gas to any persons head,” the statement read.