I have been letting this marinate for a few days. I needed to make sure I formulated my thoughts correctly, only because I know I'm going to step on some toes and possibly offend a few people and believe me it's not my intent.
So, this March for Our Lives event that took place on 24 March had me really thinking since I heard about it. Not just this event but also the school walkouts. And in my book, they both are tied together. Now please don't think that I am hating on these teens that organized these events. In actuality I applaud them for wanting to use their voice to affect positive change.
When I tuned in for the march this past Saturday, I noticed a sea of diverse people, black, brown, white, male, and female. The problem that I have with this march and many marches that have taken place such as the Women's March, the Pink Pussy Hat March, and other marches is black and brown people show up for these marches in droves no questions asked. We undeniably throw our support behind these efforts full force. We are there for it. However, when we have a march in protest of black and brown men and women being gunned down by police, we don't get the same type of wholehearted support. What we get is a whole lot of,
"They should have complied!", "They shouldn't have run!", "They are thugs", "They this...", "They that...", "They, they, they".
We hold out hope that the justice system is truly blind and will work the way it's supposed to work in theory. No matter how many witnesses there are, or how much video footage there is, the offending officer seems to always have no charges levied against him or her. There was a man, a mentally challenged man's caregiver, lying on the ground with his hands raised above his head and the officer shot him. The caregiver asked the officer, “Why did you shoot me?”, the officer responded he didn't know.
It is very disheartening, frustrating, and angering that in 2018 black and brown men are suffering a modern-day lynching at the hands of the police. What happened to due process? Since when did the police become judge, jury, and executioner all within the same day. I don't know about any other melinated person but I'm tired of worrying about the men and boys in my family when they leave home. I’m tired of having the police conversation with my son when he walks out the door. And granted there are some racially ambiguous kids that will never know what it feels like to be a Black person and will pass. Then there are others that will know exactly what it feels like because they can't pass, but unless the Black parent is there to give it to them straight they aren't going to know what they will be facing. No, a non-black or non-brown parent cannot tell that child what they are facing because that parent has never faced it. Even when we are educated and not from the hood, we still get stereotyped as being uneducated, ratchet, and from the hood by police officers regardless of race, because as long as they have on that uniform all we see is blue.
Don't get me wrong not all police officers are corrupt or crooked or bad. But until the good cops are as outraged about the killing of unarmed people as citizens, then we can only lump you all into one category. When good cops are silent on unarmed people being killed, you are being complicit until you prove otherwise.
How does all of that tie back into the March for Our Lives march this past Saturday? If the amount of people that showed up at the march Saturday show up when we march to protest these killings there can be a much bigger impact made. With all this said, I ask was the march Saturday really for us or were we used as fillers just as we were in the feminist movement, the Pussy Hat Movement, the Women's Movement, and even though it was created by a Black woman the #metoo movement to a certain extent? ~o.flows.up