Torn here

So I wasn’t going to write anything because well, I’m white and there are other voices we should all be listening to and reading. But then I’m getting angrier and angrier as time passes. I went to bed last night reading my progressive white friends trying to ignore races impact on all of this, and then I woke up to Mike Brown’s father delivering food in Ferguson for Thanksgiving. I’m having some trouble reconciling those two things. But we will come back to the first. Then the National Bar Association is calling on the Department of Justice to do something because they do not understand how the Grand Jury could reach this conclusion given the evidence. I’m not holding my breath on this one.

Let me come back to this removal of race. You can’t do it. The end. See yes, the militarization of the police is a problem. It was a problem at Occupy. It was a problem before that too, and the images of the police in Ferguson are ridiculous. But Mike Brown was murdered by Darren Wilson for being a black man (boy really), and Tamir Rice was murdered for being a black boy by the Cleveland police. Claiming it doesn’t matter because the real problem is the militarization of the police is willful ignorance and the discounting of the black lived experience. It is unacceptable. I expect this from conservatives claiming Wilson was right, but if you’re on our side, then get with it friends. The US condones and defends the right of the police (and anyone else) to kill black men. This is the underlying problem. Racial oppression was one of the ideas on which our justice system was built. The militarization of the police is one consequence of that idea. The criminal justice system doesn’t work for the oppressed it works to keep the status quo. Keep those with power safe from those without it. I mean come on; most of our laws are rooted in property law, even our rape laws. The system isn’t broken; this is how it was designed to work.

Now for the protesting, I’m not opposed to taking to the streets, but I’m tired. I’m tired of the marches in support of rape survivors and murdered children and against war and capitalism run amok. Our society is built on the patriarchy and patriarchy reinforces classism, sexism, and racism. We’re not going to fix this by protesting for a few days or hours. I think we need a full scale revolt. I know that sounds extreme, and I’m not one for advocating violence, but I don’t know what other options are left. But we will get nowhere by reforming one aspect of the justice system. We will get nowhere is the police turn their tanks back over to the military and continue to shoot children. We won’t get very far if the police agree to stop shooting children, but continue the mass incarceration of the same population.  

Honestly, I don’t feel like writing anymore or trying to continue this thought exercise to the conclusion. I’m going to go back to listening to Tracy Chapman.