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Yes, All Lives Matter. But Today The Message Is: #BlackLivesMatter
A Map Of The Global Spread Of #BlackLivesMatter Tweets, courtesy of HuffPo
#BlackLivesMatter. This year has proven to be among the most important and critical in recent history for dialogue and action surrounding race relations and police conduct. Members of Congress walked off the job this week in protest of grand jury decisions related to the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, as neither accused police officer was indicted for their victim’s murder. Public figures from athletes to entertainers have been photographed in shirts emblazoned with “I Can’t Breathe” -- the poignant and painful last words of Eric Garner. Protests have been ongoing from Ferguson to NYC to Tokyo, expressing outrage over what seems to be a lack of understanding for what’s at stake here. For many of us, the message being sent is loud and clear: the deaths of black men (in these two instances and of black individuals overall) don’t warrant even a trial to determine the innocence or guilt of those whom we know are responsible. If not even video evidence and an official ruling of “homicide” can convince a jury of wrongdoing worthy of further scrutiny, what chance do we have for achieving justice? The inevitable question in many hearts and minds becomes “do our lives mean that little?” And so we protest.
This afternoon at 2pm, thousands have planned to gather at Washington Square Park here in NYC for the Millions March. The statement is clear:
“We Demand Justice. For Mike Brown. For Eric Garner. For Akai Gurley. For All Those Innocent People of Color Killed By The Misuse of Police Force. We March Together, As One. #BLACKLIVESMATTER.”
And if you are among those who feels compelled to comment "ALL lives matter!" when you see or hear the phrase "black lives matter," I request that you stop. You don't get it.
The statement isn't "black lives matter more than [insert other race here]..." It's that our lives matter. Period. The Civil Rights Movement began to swell only 60 years ago. The Civil Rights Act took place in 1964, with the Voting Rights Act and the end of Jim Crow laws happening in 1965 -- all of this only 50 years ago. Fifty. Most of us have relatives who lived through these experiences. We are not far removed from the era in which the "system" we're being asked to trust could legally tell black children "you aren't worthy of being educated in the same schools as white children." Integration of schools and fair treatment for all races was a battle that had to be fought (and in far too many ways, a battle that still exists). We had to convince lawmakers that “separate but equal” was anything but. We had to take action in order to prevent the arrests, beatings, and murders that could occur by simply existing in spaces that cities and states had been empowered to deem for “whites only.”
You also don't get to tell me those things are "in the past,” when I grew up seeing it in the faces of my parents and grandparents. Hearing hurt in their voices. Seeing my father's tears and pain over being a 6-year-old boy in Arkansas who was unable to protect his 4-year-old baby brother from being kicked down the street by a white man because he used the wrong bathroom. It was 1954 and my uncle was a 4-year-old child who couldn't even read the "whites only" sign. The crack of my dad’s voice will forever echo in my mind: “the white man kicked him in the behind…a four-year-old...” You don’t get to tell me it’s “in the past” when just this week, I saw a video of a four-year-old young black girl crying with the kind of pain that causes a sickness in my stomach… her tears the result of white children telling her they didn’t want to play with her because she is black. In 2014. So how dare anyone part their lips or place their fingers on a keyboard to tell another person to "get over" the centuries of systematic and institutionalized racism that clearly still linger to this day. You don't get it.
We began life in this country as property. Considered 3/5 of a person. Not even fully human. The only difference being the pigmentation of our skin, but still not considered a human being. That history didn’t magically disappear from the social consciousness in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act and it certainly hasn’t vanished in the span of only 50 years since.
So, yes. To everyone commenting "ALL lives matter" -- I agree 100%. But stop. You are not adding anything even remotely meaningful to a conversation you clearly haven't tried to understand. You simply don't get it...yet. And so we continue to protest.
>>>Get More Info (via Millions March NYC)
