Blog: [dis]_enTpowered

Black Lives Matter: The Movement for Black Lives

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

–Frederick Douglass, “West India Emancipation,” Speech (1857)

Black Lives Matter: The Movement for Black Lives

I wanted to use this post to discuss the critical issue of police brutality and to state without question my unequivocal support for Black Lives Matter and The Movement for Black Lives.

These last several months, and many years, of witnessing such horrific and nonsensical acts of violence against members of our own communities by the very people sworn to protect them is a wrong that has seared a scar into my soul that can never be healed until this issue is righted. I have known too many friends and have taught too many students whose lives have been impacted by aggressive policing to be silent.

To watch George Floyd be murdered on camera for a $20 bill by a man so grossly assured in his power and authority to take the life of another without consequence, is to stare directly into the horrifying abyss of institutionalized police violence.

Despite all four of the cops involved having been arrested and charged, what “justice” can truly be had for Mr. Floyd and his family, and every other victim of police brutality and their families, when our “legal” institutions and public “safety” systems have been so severely corrupted and undermined by bigotry, fear, and hate?

That the inhumanity of these cops is made undeniable by their cowardly and arrogant capitulation to an immoral understanding of “law-and-order” that destroys public trust in policing, is bitter solace for those engaged in the desperate fight for racial justice and police accountability.

To bear witness to the systematic destruction of Black and Brown bodies in an effort to rationalize and justify fear and hate of those bodies is to bear witness to the nightmare that is the Black and Brown American experience in a country trapped by its own delusions and mythology, unable and unwilling to confront the truth of its origins and history. 

Yet, despite the horrors of racial injustice, it has also been unbelievably encouraging to witness the collective energy and dignity of protesters in rejecting the false choice between safety and liberty. If the world that you live in, if the authority that commands you, demands that you question nothing and accept anything as a caveat to preserving your own humanity and right to life, then you must tear those walls down.

Because the safety and security that we think we feel is an illusion, a facade borne on the backs of those who can never be safe or secure. Our silence in the face of injustice is a betrayal to those who pay the cost for the lies that we are able to tell ourselves and the “civility” that we absolve ourselves regarding.

Instead, we must add our voices to theirs and take it upon ourselves to shoulder the mantle of change, in order to ease the burden for those who must bear the weight of what is a terrible sacrifice.

In the words of American poet and activist, Emma Lazerous: “Until we are all free, we are none of us free” (1883).

I am so proud of these protesters for their fierce honesty and unrelenting commitment to sustained action. They have inspired me, they have helped me to feel less afraid, and, most importantly, they have lit a fire under me to continue to #standup and #speakout.

It is for them and for myself that I have the courage to speak. It is for them and for myself that I commit to continuing to fight for my freedom and yours. 

What do you fight for? What do you commit to?