Thread by @michaelharriot

You do not EVER have to sharing video of a cop lynching a black man.

Here’s why.

A thread:

If you want to show police brutality, you can go back to 1638, when the first police force in America, the Boston Watch, started.

Why was it created?

Well, let one of the cops tell you;

But of course, the police didn’t do that after 1783, when Massachusetts outlawed slavery, right?

Let’s ask the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and Others in North America.

Down South, SC established the slave patrols, which evolved into police departments.

What did they do?

Don’t ask me, ask the law;

But, of course these are just enslaved Africans.

After the Civil War, things got better, right?

Let’s look at how the federal govt summarized Georgia and Mississippi’s new “Freedmen’s laws”

But then black soldiers fought for freedom in WWII so cops started acting better right?

Let’s look at what happened:

But it got better during the civil rights era, right?

Well what started the Selma to Montgomery March?

A state trooper shooting Jimmie Lee Jackson

If they they herded peaceful children into pens during the Birmingham children’s crusade what do you think they WOULDNT DO??

And somewhere a white person is saying, “Martin Luther King would never say that!”

Well, what would he say?

Look, we don’t need to see these horrific videos.

We’ve seen them crack John Lewis’ skull.
We’ve seen them bomb the MOVE headquarters.
We saw Rodney King
We saw Rekia Boyd and Philando Castile and Eric Garner and and Korryn Gaines and...

By now, anyone who needs video proof to accept the reality of police violence isn’t going to believe it anyway.

It’s like this guy I read about in another book.

He used to tell people that the law was fucked up, but no one believed him because the cops said he was a criminal.

This particular dude never committed a crime in his life. Now, I wasn’t there, but from what I read, the dude KNEW the cops wanted to kill him for participating in a a protest movement.

His friend (who was also involved in some of the protests) even wrote about it:

When they came together in Galilee, he said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life.” And the disciples were filled with grief.

Matthew 17:22-23

Of course, there’s no way you can know what actually happened.

I mean, why would you believe it if there wasn’t video?