Friday, July 8, 2016

What To Say...

I'm not for the taking of any innocent life; I do not support terrorism, revenge killings or any form of brutal hate attacks. But this killing of unarmed African-Americans and people of color has gone unanswered and ignored for far too long in this country. It hasn't mattered if those "in question" were: armed or unarmed, compliant or obstinate, male or female, healthy or infirm, minor or adult, felon or upstanding citizen- if you're Black or of color, guilt is assumed; your death, a simple statistic on another night's shift... 

When the police actively target you, the law fails to protect you, and the economy sees you primarily as fodder for their prison industrial complex- why should anyone be surprised that the other side finally countered with some senseless killing of their own?

5 comments:

lstevenson said...

Stan,

I live in Dallas (I was not downtown last night), and before this march, I felt something different than the others that Dallas has had. There was no time for anyone to grieve and process (as has become the norm now) with these two shootings, they were just so close together, then with the early details of what happened in Minnesota, and the video from it, tempers were just at an all time high.

Stan B. said...

Honestly, I'm surprised incidents such as this haven't already occurred on a broader scale. How much more is one faction of the nation supposed to take when the very people who are supposedly there to safeguard you, are the ones killing you?

Again, I'm sorry it's come to this- but the status quo was equally unacceptable. How much longer will we continue to deny and ignore our major problems concerning race, and guns?

lstevenson said...

I agree, and then we have our Lt Governor calling the protestors that were marching peacefully alongside the Dallas Police, hypocrites because they were doing what any normal person would do when they hear multiple gunshots, run in the opposite direction. He said they were hypocrites for protesting the police, then asking them to save them when the shots rang out, how is that helping anybody??

Stan B. said...

I had to laugh when I read that- getting as far away from the police in that situation in Dallas was what would have most helped save them.

Then again... that's pretty much the general rule when it comes to people of color and the police in any place, any time in this country.

Wow, those dots didn't take too long to connect!

lstevenson said...

I had to hang my head in shame when I read it, even more so when I saw the video of him saying it, with so much anger in his voice. Like wow, so you really feel that way, and those are the words you chose to represent the Texas Governor's office?

I honestly don't think that we'll ever get over our problems with race and guns, our racial issues are just so deeply embedded that people say that we're post racial, and we Americans love our guns, way too much...