We Can't Breathe

We have been going through a pandemic for 400 years.  FOUR HUNDRED YEARS. We have been shackled, whipped, strung up, lynched, dragged, drowned, tarred, burned, gunned down, by chokehold, by knees in neck and killed in any and every God-forsaken manner, body by body by body, broken, bruised, breathless. Dead.  

For a traffic stop for not signaling a turn (Sandra Bland), the ultimate price, death.  For selling loose cigarettes (Eric Garner), death.  For triggering your own life alert in your own home (Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr.), death.  For being a twelve year old with a toy gun (Tamir Rice), death.  For going from your own wedding stag party (Sean Bell), death.  For running into your own home (Ramarley Graham), death.  For watching television and eating ice cream in your own home (Botham Jean), death.  For laying in your own bed (Breonna Taylor), death.  For allegedly offering a forged instrument, (George Floyd), death.  The last will not be the last.  Others will come, possibly before the ink on this paper dries and before you read it.  The numbers are infinite.  All come and will come with death penalties.   The killers the same, protected by their uniforms in blue.  The crime, being Black.

We can't criticize bad police officers.  When we do, we are attacked as being police haters, which speaks a lot about their privilege.  Don't dare say anything about this protected class.  When you, the good police officers, don't call out the bad, you are saying that the bad is as good as the good.

For allegedly whistling at a white woman in Money, MS, 14 year old Emmet Till is massacred on August 28, 1955.  For worshipping at the 16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, AL on September 15, 1963, four little girls are bombed.  For accepting a ride from someone he thought he knew well enough, James Bryd is chained to the back of a truck and dragged for 3 miles in Jasper, Texas on June 7, 1998.  For having a prayer meeting at the Emmanuel AME Church, Charleston, SC on June 17, 2015, nine are gunned down.   For jogging in his neighborhood, Ahmaud Arbery is shot down like an animal on February 23, 2020.  The murderers the same, ku klux clan, neo nazi, white supremacists.  low, low and low.  the lowest.  racists bastards all.  (lower case used intentionally).  For what?  Simply living in a Black body.  

The Black body has no value to some and I will dare say to most.  When daniel pantaleo choked the air out of Eric Garner on July 17, 2014 and when derek chauvin did the same to George Floyd on May 25, 2020, they did it because they could.  And why wouldn't they?  What's the penalty, if any?  The worst that may happen to them is they lose their jobs, but somewhere down the road apiece, other municipalities will hire them.  Indictments are like one strand of hair on a fully coiffed head. Prosecutors everywhere and the criminal justice system do not value the Black body. 

The ku klux clan executioners of Emmet Till were acquitted.  It took all of thirty-six years to indict the murderers of those four little girls, even though the murderers were known from the outset.  The mass murder of the nine in the church was taken to McDonald’s after he was caught in a manhunt. Why?  All he did was kill nine "niggers," what’s the big deal.  The poor boy is hungry.  Let’s feed him.  Were those the thoughts in those officers' minds and did they more than likely mouth those words using even more expletives?  pantaleo, for his crime, was fired.  chauvin and his three cohorts have been fired.  Fired, not arrested.

What’s to happen to chauvin who is on videotape calmly looking toward the people gathered and staring directly in their cameras, the face of evil, with knee and weight in Mr. Floyd’s neck as he pleaded “I can’t breathe” and called for his mother?  It doesn't matter how many videotapes from how many angles there are, let’s not take any joy in that.  Philando Castille had his murder Facebook lived and no indictment.  Eric Garner was videotaped as he was mercilessly choked by pantaleo, no indictment.  I have no confidence that the criminal justice system will come back with an indictment and less with a conviction.  Already, the prosecutor is saying he sees no evidence of a crime.  Killing by strangulation, with knees embedded in the neck must be on the books of the Minneapolis Police Department.

Who can forget the Rodney King case where the LAPD officers who viciously beat him on March 3, 1993, were acquitted and LA burned.  It's happening in Minneapolis.  Peaceful protests have turned to violent outbursts of looting and shooting and burning of buildings.  I will never condone violence.  Ever.  I understand rage.  I understand hopelessness.  I understand being tired of the same old thing.  We know that, historically, rioters and looters are sent in, some paid, to infiltrate and make the situation worse to make us as a people look bad.  Instead of attempting to bring calm and care and concern, the only response the leader of the supposedly free world can give is "When the looting starts, the shooting starts," confirming the ease at which the Black body can be taken down in a barrage of bullets.  This is war! 

Until the philosophy

Which hold one race superior and another inferior 

Is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned 

Everywhere is war, me say war

That until there's no longer

First class and second class citizens of any nations

Until the color of a man's skin 

Is of no more significance than the color of his eyes

Me say war 

That until the basic human right

Are equally guaranteed to all

Without regard to race

Dis a war..... Bob Marley

Wherever we are!  We can't walk in a park, use the restroom in Starbucks, be an eight year old selling water, stay at an AirBnb, be a Yale student outside your dorm, live in a tony neighborhood, own a business in an upscale office building, barbecue in the park without someone calling the police.  We are not allowed to breathe the same air, live the same life.

Even the damn coronovirus is discriminating against us.  Blacks are disproportionately affected by COVID-19.  We are more likely to be infected, more likely to be placed on a ventilator and more likely to die.  We can't catch a breath from COVID or from the actions of the police and others.

The "I can't breathe," last breath of Eric Garner, the eerily same as George Floyd, became the rallying cry of Black Lives Matter.  Then came others with All Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter.  Your lives have always, in ALL WAYS mattered.  Ours haven't for 400 years.  FOUR.HUNDRED.YEARS.

Blacks, all of us, are being lynched day in and day out, sucking the air out of us, breath by breath by breath.

Update:

5/29/2020, about 2pm, it is reported that derek chauvin was arrested and charged with 3rd degree murder and manslaughter

8 minutes and 46 seconds - how long that Assassin (now he can be capitilazed) had his knee in George Floyd's neck.

Prosecutor says he mispoke and was misunderstood.  He said what he said.

Leader of free world says he doesn't know where those words came from.  They came from a racist police sheffif in the 60's.  From where did you, Mr. Trump, learn those words?