Breathe
This is cathartic for me, read it or not,- it’s long.
This man (Frank Tyson) should not have died. The Officer should not have done what he did. The other officers should have intervened. He should be held accountable. They should all be held accountable. There are so many points in time that better choices would have made all the difference in the world. It’s heartbreaking.
The Mayors and the Governor should shut up for a bit and do their jobs. Trump should accidentally drop his phone in a toilet.
So many people want to say something (like me I guess, lol) but when we do not think about what we’re saying or check the facts of what is told us we drive wedges between all of us.
So much false reporting here it is truly difficult to find out what exactly is happening. The same bait and switch reporting is still being done. A story about white men with guns is more sensational than multi-race men with guns protecting community property. Every person arrested from out of state is more sensational than just trying to say that the protesters and rioters can be different people.
I hope that everyone wants change. Those who are led by their conscience to protest should protest, they should not loot,- but it is my belief that many of the protesters are not the ones looting.
We are hearing a lot of things like ‘protesters shouldn’t be rioting/looting’ and again, I really don’t think that’s the case.
What is the case is there are people taking advantage of this unrest and hurting any movement, dampening change, changing the topic of the discussion which is the whole point of the protests,- to push forward in erasing racial inequality. And like it or not some (or most according to local news channels) are local.
No man (or woman) should fear walking down the road because of his color, or walking in his neighborhood because of his color. A suspect description only as black should not be grounds to detain any black person without other detail/information. We should respect law enforcement but law enforcement officers must rise to that station. It is not a station of power or control but of sober responsibility.
So many (most?) of us want change. We need a dialog.
There are many ways to stop change or dialog. Tell people there’s ‘no way they can suffer injustice cause they are not black.’ Tell people because they are white, they are part of the problem. Shut them down when they want to understand. Tell them that just because someone does not choose to put their anger on social media doesn’t mean the situation doesn’t anger them. Tell them that if they question a news story’s veracity, they are trying to undermine equality.
What should we change?
The change we need obviously is not more violence. We need better screening for police officers both upon hiring as well as during their careers. We need better and recurring training for law enforcement. Invest in their mental health to prevent or identify burnout issues. Train them on better or newer de-escalation techniques. Provide real deterrent when excessive force is used, and provide more training on how to avoid excessive force and how and when to reassess a situation.
We need so many things to change and few posts I’ve seen move past ‘this is so terrible I hate [fill in the blank].’
This is going to be hard but let’s try it anyway.