The lives taken unjustly and without recompense at the hands of a flawed society, at the hands of police officers whose trials drag justice to its extent, cannot rest until our nation not only faces its crimes against humanity, but moves to fix them. (3/21)
It occurs to me that in Thomas’ novel, the guilty officer reacts to a situation on gut instinct, rather than acting in his role as a protector. This happens far too often in our society. It highlights the fundamental failures of our societal hierarchy. (4/21)
Why have we allowed so long the training of officers to integrate a primal fear of skin color? There is no excuse to judge a man whose crime is known to be minor and treat him as a death-row prisoner. (5/21)
Lethal injections take seven minutes to kill, and Eric Garner was choke-held and then unaided this long. George Floyd was suffocated for eight. Make no mistake on what these and other police brutality atrocities have been: executions. (6/21)
The Declaration of Independence states, “All men are created equal… endowed by their creator to…. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. Thus standing on a man’s neck while he says, “I can’t breathe” is an affront to the very core of our country’s ideals. (7/21)
Tear-gassing protesters exercising their right to freedom of speech, protest, and assembly breaks every treatise between society and leadership of which John Locke wrote. (8/21)
Shooting unarmed citizens with any sort of weapon is a direct attack on our individual rights. It is an obscenity against not only our society, but humanity itself. (9/21)
An acquaintance of mine said that had he been one of the officers involved with George Floyd’s murder, he would not have been brave enough to speak up. I cannot stress how much this sickens me. (10/21)
Our society has created the sort of obedience that prioritizes pleasing superiors over saving human beings. This is wrong. The people tasked with protecting us should be trained to value our lives over their status or reputation. (11/21)
No person should be punished on grounds of insubordination for standing up for the oppressed, for the injured, for the victimized. No person should fear criticism for committing an act of human decency. (12/21)
And to the situation at hand, what sort of culture do we breed when bullying murderers have their charges dropped? Can our government really think that watching the killers of our families will bring us peace, will bring our loved ones justice? (13/21)
I look forward to finishing Thomas’ book, but I fear for the ending. I fear for reality. I fear that like with so many other cases and protests of police brutality, this time of change and movement will dissipate, lost in the throes of “time” and “compromise”. (14/21)
These people dying today are our coworkers, our neighbors, our parents being murdered by people sworn to protect us, and no amount of time can truly heal that rift, and our lost loves deserve so much more than to just fade away. (15/21)
Tomorrow these deaths could be our siblings, our friends, our children being robbed of their futures, and there is no compromise nor substitution for saving these lives. (16/21)
So this time, we do not back down. We do not allow time to pardon those scars set into our society. It is time to #fixthesystem, to create a law enforcement which values human life over preconceptions of race. It is time for all to recognize that #blacklivesmatter. (17/21)
We fight today, in peace, with the rights endowed to us, with speech and assembly and petition, press and life and liberty and the pursuit of a happiness where people of color no longer have to fear those who have pledged to protect them. (18/21)
We fight today, and we fight tomorrow, and in peace we will continue to fight and to speak until those who oppose our movement of equal rights grow hoarse from trying to shut us down. We will not be shut down. We will not give up. (19/21)
This time, America, has to be the time that changes our society. This time has to be the time we finally heal the wounds with which our country was born. This time, finally, we will see equality defined by those who do not have it, and not those who deign to mete it. (20/21)
So until we #fixthesystem, until #blacklivesmatter, America, stand together. (21/21)
