Originally Posted by
The Bedlington Terrier
I came across this anonymous message, presumably written by a black citizen of the US, during a time of Trump ordered violent opposition to the US citizens who are protesting against the police brutality exerted in the murder of George Floyd...
All Our Lives
All lives matter.
Yes, I hear you.
Yes, no life is more important than any other.
I get that.
We get that.
All those of us who aren’t doing any killing out here,
we get that.
We get that the life of a white cop is as valuable
as a black college student, or...
No, please, let me finish,
you’ve had your say.
We know how it goes.
We get the gist.
We get that the life of a white victim of crime
is as tragic as the victim of a black victim of crime.
No one here is arguing anything different.
As far as I know no one ever has.
No, please don’t point that at me.
I’m unarmed, defenceless except for my resolve.
There’s nothing to fear from me,
except my words.
If all lives matter,
How come a man, a black man, is asphyxiated under the knee
of a white cop while three others watch him die,
yet no one’s charged, then after public outrage one man’s charged
but not the other three who look on and do nothing,
and how come that takes another eight days of protests
and national shaming across the entire the world.
How come, if all lives matter,
Ahmaud Aubery, a black man, is gunned down while out jogging
and for two months his killers walk free,
and police and officials take no action against the killer ex-cop
who also happens to be a friend of the justice department?
If all lives matter,
how come all this reminds me of Eric Garner in 2014
who also said “I can’t breathe!”
And Travorn Martin in 2012, and Rodney King in 92,
and how far back do I have to go?
To the Edmond Pettus Bridge in ‘65?
To the four little girls in Little Rock Alabama in ‘63
To Emmet Till, lynched in Mississippi aged four**** years old in 55?
To Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit in 1939?
Maybe back through entire history of segregation, Jim Crow and slavery
and the blood and bones of millions of Africans
upon which the wealth of this country was founded,
and from whose suppurating flesh the rank smell of brutality
and racism still rises and stinks out the institutions of this democracy
and the polluted ideologies of its agents and functionaries.
No! Get your hands away from my body
and stop shouting in my face.
Kill me if you want.
I am not scared of you.
No, that is not true.
Of course, I am scared, who wouldn’t be scared?
But I am staying right here, and I’m saying right now
that I’m exerting the same rights you claim to be proud to
uphold and defend.
And I believe that I believe more than you do.
You, who stands before me in the debased name of law and order,
have a question to ask yourself.
You need to ask yourself if you really do believe that
it’s self-evident that all men are born equal, and women too.
Or is it just some men and women,
specifically, the ones who look like you.
Because if you don’t then we have a problem.
America has a problem. America has many problems,
including the one who bunkers down in the White House
while he calls State Governors cowards, and preens
for the camera and doesn’t realise the rest of the world
regards him as the fool that he is. A rich fool, granted,
a rich fool who fronts up for other rich men who secretly
despise him for his crass ignorance even as they bow to him
in cynical and unabashed deference.
But this here is another problem, one that was here before him
and will likely be here after he’s gone.
And the solution to this problem requires of you
that you open your eyes and your mind,
and understand that if all lives matter,
that if life is a sacred gift to be cherished,
a property of our very being,
the very awareness of which sits at the core of our humanity,
then the killing of black people, with such consistent disregard,
and with such an absence of remorse or atonement,
cannot be tolerated.
If you do not...
take your hands off me! No, I will not get in the house.
I am staying right here. This is my street...
if you do not see that, if you refuse to understand that then you
are as guilty as the three officers who stood by
and did nothing when George Floyd was killed.
Live with that. That is your legacy.
Being here, on the street, saying ENOUGH,
that is our legacy.
And understand this too,
since we have nowhere else to go,
we are going nowhere.
Not until the day when justice is ours,
and all lives, including black lives, truly do matter.