June 1st 2020

“Have you seen what the police have been doing to those protesters today? It’s pretty unbelievable.”

            “Well…I wouldn’t go so far as to call it unbelievable.”

            “Oh, you must not have been watching the news then. Let me tell you, the police are acting like they’re the military in an occupied territory.”

            “Uh-huh.”

            “I mean, they’re assaulting defenseless men and women, arresting members of the press, using tear gas and shooting rubber bullets at peaceful protests, they’re destroying medic stations and I even heard in Indianapolis that the cops shot teargas into a medical tent. That’s a friggin war crime for Christ-sake! It’s astonishing—completely incredible—I can’t even wrap my head around it.”

            “I don’t think it’s that difficult to believe.”

            “You don’t?”

            “Not really, It’s like Lauryn Hill once said, ‘when the Son of Perdition is commander and chief, the standard is thief.’ The police are just the system's street force, the surface layer of this deep evil, but there's an entire structure supporting their actions. Think about it like this: white supremacy is the flame beneath the boiling pot of Amerikkka. What they did to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and SO many others, is the steam coming off the top.

            “The police are supposed to protect and serve, I recognize that they’ve had to up the ante in order to deal with the nationwide spread of rioting and looting, but I still think they’ve completely lost control.”

            “Protect and serve who?”

            “The people of this country.”

            “Does that really look like what they’re doing?”

            “Well, they can’t just let things degenerate into anarchy, can they? Turn on CNN right now and take a look at the way those people are acting when the police can’t enforce the rule of law. They’re setting fire to Government buildings  and stealing everything they can from chains like Target and Nike.”

            “You’re witnessing a raw collection of anger. People are angry that their demands for justice are being laughed at and dismissed. Whole families, whole communities are angry, and I’m angry too.”

            “Sure, I get it—you’ve seen my facebook posts—I stand with you one hundred percent and I want justice just as much as the next guy. But that doesn’t give anyone the right to steal, or be destructive. I think the black community really needs to utilize the power of peaceful protest at this moment in history.”

            “So, you want to tell people who were stolen from their homes not to loot? Remember, white people stole the damn ground we’re standing on. You want to tell communities who are being destroyed by the so-called ‘justice system’ not to be destructive? You have the audacity and arrogance to believe that you know how the black community should protest the violence being perpetrated against us?”

            “Us? You’re barely even black, really you look more like a Native American than anything else.”

            “You have no idea what it’s like to be multi-racial in a nation founded on white-supremacist axioms that divide people into two categories.”

“Listen, I didn’t mean any offence, and anyway your race is beside the point. I think you’ll agree that the most important thing is still getting the vote out in November and I’m very concerned about the optics of these riots. Also, I just want to say that in my opinion: if Martin Luther King were here today, I doubt he would support these looters.”

            “Right, cause Joe Biden is the answer to systemic racism we’ve all been waiting for, how could I have forgotten? Oh, by the way, look what happened to Martin—he preached peace and they still shot him dead. We can’t forget that in the majority of cases it’s the police initiating violence, not the protesters. In the majority of cases it’s infiltrators who are destroying community businesses, not protesters. But, who gets the blame?”

            “I just think that–”

            “Maybe right now, you ought to keep your thoughts to yourself for a bit and just listen.”