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If this epidemic of police violence was happening to white families, teens, women & young men & shown every week in viral videos, it wld by now be regarded as a natl crisis warranting govt intervention, punishment for the perpetrators & $ appropriated for support for the victims.
See, e.g., the opoid epidemic. The idea that Black people should accept their families being threatened with execution for shoplifting, being beaten and arrested for “talking back,” killed for running away or looking like a “bad dude” or carrying a cellphone is despicable.
We will never accept it. We will not meekly accept the effort to make us second class citizens or a fraction of a person. Every video is an indictment of this country. It marks us as powerfully as separating infants from parents at the border as a country that has lost its way.
The disgrace of this violence by ofcrs of the state, employed by the ppl who have been given the sacred duty to protect the community is a stain on this nation that marks everyone of us who condones it. We must never become numb to this.
The work of civil rights is devoted to the unrelenting demand for full citizenship for African Americans and those most marginalized. And we won’t stop. It astonishes me that people think they have no role to play in the work of civil rights. You do. Find a way to speak & work.
Wake up. Show up at community meetings.March. Call your elected leaders. Every week. Vote in every election, for every office. Educate yourself. Support @NAACP_LDF or other civil & human rights groups fighting & challenging the systems in our society that support this brutality.
The federal govt uses your tax dollars to fund local police departments. The DOJ hands put hundreds of millions to local law enforcement. That means you are supporting this conduct. This Admin has ended investigations of systemic discrimination in police depts.
We’ve lost the pressure the Obama Admin had begun to put on police depts (elections matter) but we still have local intervention. Do you know who your police chief is? Your local sheriff? Your D.A.? What are they doing?
