Category: SpiritHouse Project

A Time to Stop Killing

Pardon me for saying this, but I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was shot and killed allegedly by police in Ferguson, Missouri Saturday evening, reached inside a police car and struggled with that officer for his gun.

Everybody knows you don’t do that; everybody, especially black men, know not to do that. Mothers have to give their black boys “the talk,” to teach them how to interact with police so they will survive. Black men (and women) will talk back to police officers, and ask, “What did I do?” but nobody is crazy enough to reach inside a police car (after pushing the officer back into his car)  and wrestle with that police officer for his gun…not unless that person wants to die.

We all have to wait for “the investigation” to yield the story of what happened, but pardon me again if I say up front I don’t trust in-house police investigations. So many times, even when the evidence has seemed overwhelming as to the wrongdoing of an officer, Internal Affairs has found that the police officer is not guilty of any malfeasance, that the shooting and killing of a suspect was “justifiable.”

Pardon me yet again if it seems like police officers are just getting away with murder. They are “the law.” They commit their crimes under the cover of law. Meanwhile, innocent people are being slaughtered.

Because I say “innocent” does not mean I think that police at times have viable reasons for stopping and arresting people, but when a person who is unarmed (as was Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Eric Garner, and now, Mike Brown) and is shot down – being shot multiple times – that person is “innocent” of being a life-threatening threat to an arresting officer.

The police union in New York is now saying that they’re not sure Eric Garner was put into a choke-hold; some say he was not. The police commissioner, William Bratton, says it’s not “illegal” for a person to be put in a choke-hold. Already, the wheels of the internal “explanation” of what “really” happened are spinning.

And just last week, a 22-year-old man, John Crawford III, was shot dead at a Wal-Mart in Beavercreek, Ohio, as he held a toy gun. Police said they told him to drop it, and when didn’t, they opened fire. Police say the shooting was justified …

There are more of these stories, each one equally as disturbing.

The issue, I think, for police and for many people in society, is that they don’t see black people as humans, but, rather as “objects.” If a young black man is an “object,” wearing a hoodie or giving police back-talk, an officer feels no compunction in bringing him down.  Actually, he doesn’t have to have a hoodie on at all; he is in danger just by virtue of the color of his skin. Because of that, police officers feel like they are in the right when they shoot and kill After all, “objects” don’t have feelings; they are merely “things” which have no inherent value.

Attached to that issue is the fact that black people have been criminalized, dehumanized and demonized. That means that there is a readiness to believe that if a black person is in an encounter with police, and that black person ends up dead, that he (or she) brought it on him or herself.

One police officer, caught on CNN, said that the angry mob were “animals.” No, officer. They are people who are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Black people are really tired of members of their community being mowed down, disregarded and disrespected.

Mike Brown was shot, supposedly, 10 times. He had just graduated from high school; he was headed to college. No, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that he pushed a police officer and wrestled for his gun. I just cannot believe that. People know better than to do that; we in the black community know better than that more than anyone else.

A report done by the Malcolm X Grassroots movement said that one black person is killed by police every 36 hours. That was the figure when the report was done in 2012. Last week, the figure had dropped to one black person killed by police every 28 hours. I think that figure will change yet again.

At the end of the day, I say it again, black people count. We matter. We are worth being afforded human rights and dignity. And we are tired of being mowed down and those who mow us down walking away.

There’s something wrong with that picture.

A candid observation …

 

(To get stories and information on extrajudicial murders of black people, visit The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement at  http://mxgm.org/report-on-the-extrajudicial-killings-of-120-black-people/ and the SpiritHouse Project at  http://www.spirithouseproject.org/. To read about the Dayton man shot as he held a toy gun, go to http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/man-police-shot-in-walmart-killed-over-fake-gun-fa/ngw77/

 

 

Behold the Innocent Murdered …

Behold the innocent murdered …

I am involved in the work of SpiritHouse Project, which has been investigating cases of systemic violence against black people for some time now.

The names keep popping up: Trayvon Martin, Kendrick Johnson, Jonathan Ferrell …and now, a 19-year old black woman, Renisha McBride – young, innocent black people who have been gunned down or beaten to death, victims of systemic violence in this nation.

Why does it keep on happening?  Why are the innocent continuously slaughtered – either by police or vigilantes – and so few people express outrage?

It is clear that nobody can fight injustice alone. No, there is needed a cadre of people with different skills and gifts and talents, in order to challenge “the system,” to shake it at its core. There is needed people who are in “the struggle” for the long haul, who are willing to do what it takes to make policy makers know that “we the people” are their bosses. “We the people” have power, the power, to change corrupt and/or apathetic governments and lawmakers.

We just don’t realize it.

Part of what made people aware of how despicable lynching was was the refusal of Emmett Till‘s mother, Mamie Tills, to let authorities sweep the issue under the rug. She made people see the face of her battered son, and people began to be moved. Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother, pushed the system, which did not want to finagle with a trial against George Zimmerman. The parents of Kendrick Johnson, along with supporters, have been sitting outside municipal offices in Valdosta, Georgia, pushing “the system” to listen to them. The United States Justice Department has decided to further investigate Johnson’s death.

In the work I am doing with SpiritHouse, I am talking with mothers and relatives of murdered young people, getting the facts and the stories, wiping away my own tears as I watch tears fall from the eyes of distressed parents. One woman, the mother of a young man slain in Florida, and left to die on the side of the road by law enforcement officers, says her own health has suffered as she pushes against “the system.” She has seizures now …and is sometimes hospitalized …but she will not give up.

What we don’t see ourselves, we distance ourselves from. But these murders, which have never stopped happening, seem to be getting more and more frequent. Is it really the case that a black person had better not knock on the door of a home if he/she needs help if that home happens to be in a white neighborhood?  And will the justice system really keep jamming in the faces of “us” the people that certain people just do not matter?

I hope not. I hope there is justice in the case of Jonathan Ferrell, Kendrick Johnson, and now, Renisha McBride. I hope the families with which Ruby Sales and SpiritHouse Project and myself are working will get justice.

It is time. It is so time that America, which fights for human rights everywhere else, fights as hard for human rights right here on the mainland.

Behold the innocent, murdered. And God help us if we don’t push for justice. There but for the grace of God go ourselves, our children, our lives …

A candid observation …