#BlackLivesMatter: More Than Just Shootings

‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬ is about more than just the actual shooting of unarmed people by cops and vigilante assholes.

It’s about the blatant disrespect and ass covering. It’s about leaving a body on the ground for 4.5 hours while they try to find an excuse for why he’d dead. It’s about handcuffing a victim’s 14 year old sister because she dared freak out at seeing her 12 year old brother shot dead. it’s about yelling at a girlfriend for nearly an hour before telling her that her partner is dead, because you need to find SOME excuse for why this man was shot for holding a gun in an open carry state. It’s putting a gun to mourning people’s faces, assuming they will behave like pack animals and rip you apart for wronging one of theirs if you don’t put the boot to their necks first. It’s being so terrified of black and brown faces that instead of calling 911 when one is at the door, hurt and seeking help, you fire your shotgun, like this woman was a rabid dog. It’s laughing at the “man in a dress” as HER life bleeds away, instead of doing your fucking job and saving her life.  It’s ignoring a operator’s suggestion to stay back from confronting a “dangerous” young man because of the hoodie he was wearing. It’s also the hours of keeping that young man’s family from the body. It’s the blatant lie that people who have been searched, handcuffed and placed in the back of a cop car somehow managed to magically shoot themselves to death – and the fact that that lie is told over and over again.

It’s being called a “demon”, an “it”.  It’s having it be perfectly understandable that people would be afraid for their lives while confronting one of our savage youth.  Of course you fought for your life.  Of course he ran at you, all hulked up like the fucking Hulk.  Of course he challenged a cop in uniform.  Because that’s just what “they” do.

It’s modern day lynching. Death for minor misdemeanors. Death for being at the wrong place, wrong time, in the wrong color. “He was resisting arrest” is the new “He whistled at a white woman.”

It’s having our lives picked apart after death to find some evidence of how we deserved our deaths. Any hint that our lives weren’t perfect, and if we’re too young to have really had a life, that our parents’ lives weren’t perfect, is up for grabs.  It’s having no one care that we had families who love us, that we attended school, that we had futures, and having people care more about rap lyrics and sagging pants and backward hats and hand gestures. It’s checking our very blood for substances that magically make us more vicious, so we HAD to be put down. Because it’s easier to see us as savage animals other than people. Because actual killers with pale faces get more respect than our victims with dark faces.

It’s telling me that temporary interruptions to your shopping trip or commute are more important that making you aware of this shit. It’s telling me that my anger is wrong. It’s telling me that I, that WE, should quietly protest, out of the way of ‘normal’ people, to not be so angry, to wrap your feelings in bubble wrap and treat them as fragile, so that we can be ignored yet again when the media stops paying attention.

It’s declaring yourself “so done” with hearing us. Like we are naughty children who have been tantruming too long and need naps. Like we’re not tired of having to justify our lives over and over and fucking over again, from slavery to lynchings to medical experiments to cop murders.  If only we all could be “so done”.

It’s having to stop our momentum when two cops are shot by a raging jackass to mea culpa, and have everything and everyone blamed from our movement to Obama to Al Sharpton for the crime, while the two braintrusts from Las Vegas who shot two cops, fueled by conservative media and extremists who have actually aimed guns at law enforcement, are considered lone wolves.  It’s being considered a collective “you people” while white criminals are seen as individuals.

It’s more than just a series of shootings.

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#BlackLivesMatter: More Than Just Shootings
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