I’m a protester getting part of the $9 million settlement. It’s not enough.

Every morning, when I wake and pick up the child who sleeps in the crib, my husband and I pull her into bed between us. From either side, we gently croon a Raffi song. I breastfeed her awake.

All this like clockwork.

Also like clockwork: the way my forearm goes numb as I nurse her.

It’s nerve damage, damage from the zip ties the police bound demonstrators like me with as punishment for a nonviolent protest near the Art Museum, for nonviolently marching in response to the murder of George Floyd in 2020. The ties were so tight they caused nerve damage in my arm that, three years later, still hasn’t healed.

Occasionally, the numbness is simply that: numbness.

Most of the time, though, it’s a prompt for difficult memories. What should be a tender moment of togetherness becomes a reminder of police violence, of clouds of tear gas, of screams and hails of rubber bullets. Of women screaming in pain in the back of a police van as the zip ties dug into our flesh.

On Tuesday morning, I remembered all that again. I usually do.

But that day, another thought emerged for the first time: a small measure of justice.

On Monday, Philadelphia announced it would pay more than $9 million to protesters like me, who were hit with tear gas and rubber bullets during the 2020 protests. This historic settlement is not a complete victory, but it is absolutely a win.

“This historic settlement is not a complete victory, but it is absolutely a win.”

It is a win not because of the money, but because it means we were able to hold our city government and the police accountable for their violent attacks on Black communities, and on protesters exercising our First Amendment rights.

I and other participants in the lawsuit organized, fought, and forced them to reckon with their wrongdoing.

At the same time, this settlement, by itself, fixes nothing.

My forearm still goes numb when I nurse my child. It also happens when I push her stroller up a hill.

My husband still has scars from where the so-called “rubber” bullets hit him as he tried to help people on I-676 comply with police orders and escape clouds of tear gas.

We were out there to protest deadly police brutality, and police brutality is what we received.

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Hardest hit was the Black community of West Philadelphia. Their children were gassed in their own homes. Their elder family members were shot in their own neighborhoods by police eager to shut down critical speech with brutal force.

What happened to my husband and me was an injustice, but that injustice pales in comparison with how entire Black communities were gassed and terrorized by police during those days of protest.

As an elected West Philadelphia committeeperson, I am still outraged by this.

As a mother, I am still outraged by this.

This settlement is a win, but we cannot afford to let it be our last or only win.

For the sake of this city’s future and the safety of our communities, we can’t afford to pretend that this small measure of justice fixes the systemic violence we were out there protesting or the violence that Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw and Mayor Jim Kenney allowed police to visit on us and our neighborhoods.

It is exhausting to hear this year’s mayoral contenders compete to reward and further enable a Police Department that has proven time and time again that it will visit racist force on Black communities and antiracist activists in response to any provocation, real or imagined.

The last thing we should be doing is emboldening cops. What we should be focused on is limiting their ability to act as an occupying military that treats civilians as enemy combatants.

We need our City Council and mayoral candidates to back a full ban on use of so-called “less lethal” ordnance like rubber bullets, chemical weapons like tear gas, and sonic cannons against civilians who aren’t inflicting bodily harm on others.

Without such a ban, police will once again find excuses to gear up and go to war against nonviolent protesters and nonwhite neighborhoods.

They will lie and invent reasons to gas and shoot and scar us and our neighbors in vulnerable communities. Again.

We deserve better. Our neighborhoods deserve better.

Our aspiring leaders can commit to meeting this need now, or they can face us as we organize, build power, and force their hand.

Either way, we will fight for justice. We will do what liberation-minded organizers do, and ensure that, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.

And ultimately, we will win.

Again.

Gwen Snyder is a professional organizer and longtime Philadelphia activist.