I Can't Breathe redux

I published the following in 2017.

ARE YOU A GOOD ONE?

It's been a very long time since I posted anything here. For the past two and a half years or more I have felt like Eric Garner - I can't breathe.

In 2016 enough Americans voted for him to elect Donald Trump as 45th president of the United States. Words I hoped and prayed I would never say. This was a man who during his campaign said that Mexicans in the U.S. were all rapists and criminals, praised dictators and murders like Adolf Hitler, Kim Jong-Un, Joseph Stalin and Rodrigo Duterte, a man who said outright that he wanted to ban Muslims from entering the United States and who in referring to women spoke of "grabbing 'em by their pussy". I find it difficult to preface this person's name with the title "President" so will henceforth refer to him as "45"

When I was a child the wisdom of the dominant culture was that police officers were our friends. We could go to them if we were in trouble and they would try to help us. The police motto after all was "To protect and serve." I never was quite able to believe that. To me the police were an occupying force, marching down the streets bristling with arms. Their job was to protect other people from me,  and people like me, and to serve the status quo. I heard stories of people beaten by police. As a 12 year old I watched a police officer harass and intimidate a school mate. Whispers of people in police custody mysteriously dying.

You would think that over the decades things would have changed but guess what, they haven't. They have in fact gotten worse. Or maybe it's just that we now have full (er) disclosure. As black bodies continue to pile up the stench is finally getting to be impossible to ignore. Inner city residents are for the most part a marginalized people with the inherent distrust of authority that goes with that. Police are the symbol of that authority. And they all to frequently abuse it. There is now exhaustive video  proof of what we have known and experienced for decades. (We weren't the ones who needed proof, but in case you did.) The Justice Department has been to Cleveland. In a fairly comprehensive report they have documented decades of abuses of power by police.

In recent weeks 45 made a speech to a police organization in which he ignored a key concept of our legal system - innocent until proven guilty- and gave "law enforcement" agents carte blanche to abuse suspects with impunity. I believe one of the more frightening statements he made was something to the effect of  "don't bother being nice to them" There was no mistaking what he was saying or the response of the officers, who cheered and applauded.

The organization representing Police Chiefs was quick to distance themselves from 45's statements and say that they believe in treating every civilian with respect and dignity. I guess the officers who laughed and applauded didn't get that particular memo. Several of the unions representing police officers, including Cleveland's own Steve Loomis,  agreed with 45 and praised him. All well and good for the Association of Chiefs of Police to say they don't condone mistreating suspects but I have to wonder, if the Chiefs are disavowing this behavior and officers are cheering it where is the disconnect and what are the Chiefs doing to address it? I have seen very little evidence to back up the Police Chiefs' claim of fair treatment.

When we complain and protest the response is "Blue Lives Matter" and talk about how we are attacking police. Listen to the wisdom of Kareem Abdul Jabaar - "Police are not under attack, institutionalized racism is. Trying to remove sexually abusive priests is not an attack on Catholicism, nor is removing ineffective teachers an attack on education. Bad apples, bad training, and bad officials who blindly protect them, are the enemy. And any institution worth saving should want to eliminate them, too."

Right before 45 made this speech I was in the grocery store waiting for someone to pick me up. This store has a uniformed Cleveland Police Officer as a security guard. The officer that day happened to be black. Standing in line was a young black woman with two very young children, both probably under 5 years old. As I smiled at their antics the younger child, a boy, looked up at the police officer and asked him in all seriousness "are you a good one?" As I sat there with my heart shattered, blood rushing in my ears, I'm sure the officer must have responded in the affirmative but I couldn't even hear his response. What must he have felt, to have this child, so young he could barely get the words out ask him this question? What about this smiling child, interrupting his play with his sister to make sure he was safe? Or his young mother who surely knows that, not so many years from now, when her child leaves her presence she will have to worry that she might not see him alive or whole again.

After negative feedback 45 said that he was just joking. Is that why the audience laughed and applauded? I watched the video of the speech and did not get a hint of sarcasm or humor. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a book about the Birmingham campaign called "Why We Can't Wait"  in which he addressed the call of people to let things take their natural course, or not to upset the apple cart. It's worth reading and as timely now as it was when he originally wrote it.

The leader of our country encourages police brutality and later says it's a joke. Police officers sworn to protect and serve cheer and applaud  him. Everyday a new name is added to the list of our ancestors gone too soon through state sponsored violence. Children not even in school  yet know that they can't trust the person in uniform. My heart lies on the floor of the grocery store broken into pieces. We can't wait.
I can't... breathe.

FAST FORWARD 3 YEARS

I REALLY hate repeating myself but I can't ...breathe

Ahmaud Arbery

George Floyd

Jamel Floyd

Botham Jean

Atatiana Jefferson

Justin Howell

Sean Monterossa

Breonna Taylor

I'm going to assume that if you are reading my blog you know who these people are. If you don't know you've got work to do. (Hint they're all DEAD).  These names and scores more stretching back for over a hundred years are etched in the psyche of black people in this country. Do your friends and family know who these people are? Your non-black co-workers? Have you talked to them about these murders?

I have a question for those of you born before 1970. Do you remember being 10 years old? What was your greatest fear? Did you stand in a crowd watching armed men and tanks rolling through your neighborhood? Were you terrified when the police came to the door hassling your mother and asking where your father was? (Thinking back he probably was in violation of curfew). Did you walk to school through a war zone and hear how this was your folks' fault? At 12 did you watch in fear as a grown man, who, from your child's perspective, looked almost like a giant, used the power of his uniform and authority to manhandle and terrorize a fellow schoolgirl. For almost a week I was that frightened little girl again. She never really goes away. Do you know why? Fifty years later she still lives in occupied territory. She lives in a country that tells her that her life is negligible; where the struggle of just living day to day is summed up in trendy hashtags like driving while black or jogging while black. I wasn't surprised by the murder of George Floyd and if you were you haven't been paying attention.

Like so much else in the U.S.,  policing has it's roots in slavery. The genesis of organized policing was slave patrols.  Their job was the control of black bodies and making sure that black people stayed in their place. These vigilante groups were allowed to use intimidation, terror and whatever force they deemed necessary up to and including death. People didn't care how they did it. They just wanted results.  https://theconversation.com/the-racist-roots-of-american-policing-from-slave-patrols-to-traffic-stops-112816  This sounds all to familiar.

"It's just a few bad apples" "Most cops are good people" Good people who are an occupying force in our communities. How much longer and how many more deaths before it becomes clear that policing in our country is a bad system? 

Let's look at that apple analogy for a minute. You've got a barrel of apples that has worms in it. Would you throw some good ones in hoping to get rid of the worms or would you know that those good apples are gonna be worm food. You gotta stop ignoring those worms, throw out the apples and scrub that barrel clean. Better yet Get A New Barrel!

A diseased tree cannot produce good fruit. Ask a guy named Matthew "A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit." Matt 7:18:  “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit." Matt 12:33. I could bore you with facts and figures but I won't. (Google is your friend). This tree we call policing has long been producing a very big crop of very strange fruit and it's past time to cut it down.

There's been quite a bit of feel good news coverage recently over some cops who knelt in front of protestors as a show of some kind of solidarity. Yay?

That makes a great photo op and ....what? I'm back to that little boy in the grocery store - "Are you a good one?"  Do we hear from you when it takes months or even years to even get an indictment when a police officer kills someone? Are you there when a police officer clearly violates your own rules, someone dies and the officer gets paid administrative leave while a family struggles to find money for a funeral?  Where were you when Timothy Loehman murdered Tamir Rice, or when Michael Brelo jumped on the hood of Timothy Russell and Malissa William's car and fired 15 rounds through the windshield. I could go on but you get the picture.

Call me a cynic but my momma didn't raise  no fool. If a bunch of police officers drop to their knees in front of me I'm heading for the hills cause it was probably preceded by the word ready and followed by aim and fire. They are just going to have to shoot me in the back. Like Walter Scott.