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Alton Sterling, Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Blue Hurt, Blue Lines, Blue Lines Blog, California, facebook, Falcon Heights, Fruitvale Station, Georgia, Key Yemaya Walker, Keypsiia, Keypsiia Walker, Keypsiia Yemaya Walker, LA Riots, Los Angeles, Louisiana, Minnesota, Murder, Oakland, OJ Simpson, Oscar Grant, Philando Castile, Photography, Police Brutality, Rodney King, Sacramento, San Francisco, twitter, UNC, UNC Chapel Hill
I wake up further enraged this morning…there is no time to mourn when the news of the next murder is broadcast. How much longer will we cast a blind eye, and allow locations, tweets, and posts to be evidence of our disgust and displeasure, yet let it end there? The pandemic of violence against us in the United States, and systematic violation and disregard of our lives is reported daily. Should my future wife have to worry whether I will come home, or whether she has to watch me die in public? Should I have to worry about my future son not returning home from college? Should my future daughter live in fear that at any moment, her father, brother, boyfriend…husband, will not return from their day? Will I make it home alive tonight?
I refuse to live my life in fear, but these are real questions to be asked in a country where increasingly obscure locations, towns, and places become unfriendly reminders of how devalued the life of a Black man is. Last year I felt an uneasiness as I rode past Fruitvale Station…what was simply a stop on the B.A.R.T. is now an eerie reminder of a New Year’s shooting of an unarmed Oscar Grant was murdered by a police officer. Our lives our being reduced to temporary outpourings of grief, vigils, speeches, and memories tied to a location. However, I wasn’t…we weren’t born to be symbols of tragedies that continue to repeated on, as we have seen the last two days, a daily basis. Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are simply the new names added the growing list of disregarded lives. Continue reading
