These are the words Mike Brown's step-dad shouted over and over again right after the grand jury announcement. He has since apologized. His wife, Mike Brown's mom, has said that he was just full of emotion, but he didn't really mean it that way.
Well, I gotta say, why the fuck not? Why not burn the whole thing to the ground? Let us empty our prisons, our police stations, our courtrooms, our prosecution offices, then burn the whole damn thing down.
That's honestly seeming like a good option at the moment.
I posted this quote from a Jezebel article on Facebook yesterday:
We knew Ferguson would burn. We prayed it wouldn't, but we knew that the protests that have taken place over the past 108 days have been an accumulation of emotion, deep disappointment, and anger. Last night, along with all the other days and nights in Ferguson since Mike Brown was killed, was a culminated response to years of violence and oppression and racism and injustice. You're a fool if you think protesters were only protesting against Darren Wilson. They were protesting for Mike Brown, of course, but also for Trayvon Martin and Renisha McBride and Danroy Henry and Fred Hampton and Medger Evers and Emmett Till.In the comments, I said: "And if you're a white person complaining about the property damage last night, but don't know the names of the martyrs listed here, then you have no right to talk. Open your eyes to the violence inflicted on black bodies before you moan about the violence done to store windows."
I also re-posted a status update from Andrea Gibson that said, in part, "If your sympathies lean towards Darren Wilson -- a murderous systems OWNS your humanity."
Needless to say, I haven't been the most popular person in my social media circles recently. I've gotten in some pretty heated discussions with family members and even some acquaintances I haven't talked to in years. I've been pissed off and filled with grief and despair and hopelessness.
My family has this tradition at thanksgiving dinner of going around the table and saying what we're thankful for. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to answer that question this year. I am so goddamn privileged. But I can't and I won't claim to be grateful for benefiting from the oppression that kills people who don't look like me. I won't say that I'm thankful for my education opportunities and for my good job prospects or even for the health and safety of my family. Because every single one of these things are, in one way or another, benefits I enjoy without any effort or thought because of the systems of oppression that own the soul of this country.
I think I've reached a breaking point. For awhile now I've been wondering how I can be a prosecutor, be a cog in this system, in this prison industrial complex that owns our country. I spent this past summer working for the State's Attorney's Office at the misdemeanor and traffic court a few minutes from my house. I actually seemed to get my love for prosecution back over the summer, and I was blissfully grateful. Part of the reason why I didn't struggle with my moral opposition to the system as much over the summer was because I honestly thought that fining people for driving without a license or having a small amount of weed couldn't possibly be feeding into the system. Who could it harm? It's just a fine. It's just a bit of community service. That isn't contributing to a racist system. They're guilty. They didn't have a license. They were legally stopped. They violated some minor traffic law. They had a bit of weed on them. I'm not sending them to prison, so who cares? It's not like I'm sentencing people disparately based on their race (or the types of drugs used most predominately by a particular race). So I'm morally clean, right?
Yeah.
That was some ignorant, privileged, bullshit.
We live in a country that funds huge parts of its government functions through the criminalization of every day actions. We live in a country where it is perfectly constitutional for a cop to pull someone who looks like they might be "up to no good" over as long as the cop has the pretext of a petty traffic offense.
And let me be clear: every single cop in this country can find a petty traffic offense any time that they want to.
Failure to yield. Failure to signal. Improper lane usage.
I can't tell you how many cannabis possession police reports I read through over the summer where the pretext for the traffic stop and then the search was "improper lane usage." All this means is that the cop thinks (or claims) that the driver crossed over a traffic line too early or too late or something. No one really knows or cares, because there's no way of proving it one way or the other, and chances are that the cop is going to throw out the ticket for the alleged violation if the stop doesn't yield more.
And every cop has pre-conceived notions of what type of person, what type of driver, they should be looking to for one of these pre-textual stops. And this isn't because every cop in this country is a hateful, racist asshat. It has nothing to do with personal hate harboured by individual officers. This isn't a cop problem. It's an American culture problem.
It's not about whether or not the shooter is racist, it's about how poor black boys are treated as problems well before we are treated as people. Black boys in this country cannot afford to play cops and robbers if we're always considered the latter, don't have the luxury of playing war when we're already in one.When the announcement was read Monday night, I threw my computer. I physically collapsed on the floor. And I cried. I cried for so many reason. I cried because of the injustice for Mike Brown. I cried because I knew this decision would tear the Ferguson community apart. I cried because I know, or at least have some clue, about the pain and grief and despair that would be felt by black people across this country. I cried because I knew that, to them, the decision said that the death of an unarmed black boy at the hands of a cop isn't even worth the question, isn't worth the effort of a trial, isn't worthy of an attempt at justice.
I also cried because my brother and sister-in-law are in the process of adopting a son from Africa. I cried for my future nephew. Because he will be a black boy growing up in this country. I cried for him. Because no matter what we do, no matter how well my brother and sister-in-law raise him, he will still be a black boy in America. Unless the current culture and climate that criminalizes black bodies changes quickly and drastically, my little black nephew will have to one day be told that, when faced with a cop, he needs to "be strong. Be smart. Be kind, and polite. Know your laws. Be aware of how quickly your hands move to pocket for wallet or ID, be more aware of how quickly the officer's hand moves to holster, for gun. Be black. Be a boy. Have fun. Because this world will force you to become a man far more quickly than you'll ever have the need to."
One month ago in South Carolina, a state trooper pulled up behind a young black man, Levar Jones, in a gas station. The trooper claims that he saw Jones driving without his seat belt. The trooper asked Levar Jones for his ID. Jones, who had already parked and exited the vehicle when the trooper approached him, immediately reached into his vehicle for his ID. This young black man was doing everything in his power to comply with the officer's instructions. When Jones reached into his truck, the trooper shot him. Because the culture we live in today tells everyone, cops included, that young black men quickly reaching into an unseen area probably means that they are reaching for a gun.
This whole incident was caught on the officer's dash cam. The most haunting part of the whole exchange to me was that even when Jones is lying on the ground, bleeding, trying to figure out what happened, he's still saying "yes, sir" every other word, being as polite as humanly possible, and complying with every single order and instruction of the Officer who just shot him.
It terrifies me to know that my future nephew could be Levar Jones. One day he could be doing his job, stopping for a snack at a gas station, only to have a cop pull up behind him and ask for his license. My nephew could be strong, smart, polite, and kind. He could be perfectly compliant, say "yes, sir" with every other word. He could lean into his vehicle to grab his license. And, still, his quick, compliant actions could be misinterpreted by the cop as a dangerous attempt by an inherently dangerous person to get a weapon, to endanger the officer and the public. And that cop could shoot my future nephew.
My future nephew could be Trayvon Martin, walking down the street in his comfy, mostly white neighbourhood with his hood up, headphones in, talking to a friend on the phone. And some random vigilante could see this black boy, not fully fitting in in the neighbourhood, and call the 911. Or follow him. Or shoot and kill him.
My future nephew could be spotted by neighbours in his own home, and those neighbours could call the police, thinking that this black boy doesn't belong in this white home, in this white neighbourhood. The police could arrest and pepper spray my nephew, thinking he was burglarizing his own home. That's exactly what happened to DeShawn Currie, a black teenager, when he walked into his home, where his white foster parents lived.
When they were teenagers, my brothers had airsoft guns, and sometimes they carried them around. I'm terrified that if my future nephew does the same thing, and a cop sees him with it, he will be shot. I doubt my brothers every faced that fear. But my future nephew will. Tamir Rice, a twelve year old black boy was shot and killed by police in this exact situation.
These are just a few of the stories, a few of the realities of black boys in America today. I hope and pray that these realities change long before my future nephew arrives in this country, long before my future nephew becomes a teenager, a young black man assumed by far too many people to be a danger, to be a criminal, to be "up to no good" simply because of the colour of his skin.
I don't know how to live in this world. I don't know how to fix this. And I don't know how to make this treacherous, oppressive world safe for my future nephew to come into.
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