I Cannot Hear The Other Side "I Cannot Hear You"

What is the other side?  What am I talking about?  It’s what makes me crazy.  I’m talkin’ about words of justification for police apprehending by shooting to kill an unarmed black person, any person.  The only words that would soothe my soul when this happened to Michael Brown, Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri were, “A horrible thing happened here on Saturday afternoon. (August 9, 2014)  We are tremendously sorry for your loss.  We are investigating everything.”

I can give no credence to the hateful talk about the protestors, rioters, and the demonstrators - whatever they are called.  Talk implying it’s disrespectful to Mike Brown’s family for causing disruption.   

A kid is dead.  Was left shot dead in the streets for HOURS.  That is the ultimate disrespect. There was video showing it.  I couldn’t pull away from many minutes of cell phone video started well after authorities wrapped yellow tape around a wide area, crowd lines were established, police vehicles in place, lights reverberating and the child, lifeless, uncovered, body naked except for the clothes he put on that morning, lay in the middle of the street in the middle of a modern well-kept neighborhood of brick homes.  Sun shining, breeze blowing and a black child lay there, shot to death by a policeman, lay there for the entire planet to see what the local authorities thought of him and thought of all who cared about him – who loved him, LOVE him.  That’s disrespectful.  I cannot forget it.  The video stopped as a person with a white covering of some sort, stood over his body as if they were going to finally give him some privacy.  I wanted to see that happen.  I needed to see that happen.  I didn’t.  The video stopped.  Why?

My Mind Told Me, If This Was a Neighborhood of White Individuals and White families none of this would have happened to ruin anyone’s sense of self;  sense of worth for self and blood line.

My twin dourly told me “It’s tradition.”  

Immediately thought of the song from Fiddler on The Roof came to mind.  (Not so with Jim, I’m sure.) Fiddler’s “Tradition” was a rousing, yet solemn, thoughtful, and celebratory anthem for the Jewish people, for people from all walks of life.  Look how Fiddler productions continue to encourage confidence and happiness for ones’ self, for a well-defined heritage of Jewish people, and somehow for all people.

My twin’s cryptic overview of our experience stunned me.   Yes, the oppression, resultant suffering and personal turmoil, that’s tradition for us – not as individuals (if we’re lucky) but surely as ‘a people’ when it happens to one of us.

A black person may be quietly livid about what shocks us whether we are in the neighborhood or miles away…. or continents away.  It’s acceptable if we intellectually share the grief the dastardly opportunity to feel hopeless – which we refuse to be.   It’s acceptable to express understanding of the ‘wrong’ done by the victim.  It’s acceptable to help put salve over the wound by understanding the error of the victim that caused the tragedy.  No way!  I will not accept murder by authority without the perpetrator being held accountable for his/her unfortunate failing.  Thus I will suffer because accountability drifts away every time.

From reading Facebook posts, for sure happy is out there while the tragedy unfolds and ferments.  The key to that nirvana for me is to ignore the news, the TV talking heads. 

BUT, I fail me.  I check in on the latest whether via Twitter posts or hard to dismiss headlines.  And there’s the difficult to avoid intensive conversation detailing faults of the unarmed young man, his family, his neighborhood.  It seems there is relatively nothing debated about the basic impropriety of being shot multiple times to death by a civic employee, a policeman in America.  It's a big wide wonderful world we live in.  NOT!

Finally, I will not believe killing an unarmed person is condoned in any police recruit training program.  Am I wrong?

Here and now, I volunteer for a Police Recruit Training Materials Review Board.

                       

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The original writing of this piece was done on August 18, 2014 at 10:19 am, nine days after Michael Brown, Jr. was shot to death.  The conversation instigated by this weeks #stoptheparade effort directed at NYC's annual Thanksgiving Day Parade prompted it becoming a timely blog post.  (Thanks to artist, Jai Haley, for the permission to use her artwork.)   

May we all help God Bless America.