Actor Keith Wallace was face down in Philadelphia’s Love Park during his one-man, silent protest against police brutality.
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The scene in Philadelphia’s Love Park today bore a stark resemblance to the tragic day when Mike Brown, an unarmed 18 year-old who was killed by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, lied face down in the street with a trail of blood leaking from his body.
Directly under the iconic Love sign – which was draped loosely in caution tape – laid a black man with four bullet holes in his back. His left hand clung to the brim of a baseball cap and his lips unwillingly kissed the concrete.
A young girl stood just feet away with a small sign that read “call us by our names.”
Who was the man laying in his own blood? A Philly-born actor named Keith Wallace who is trying to make an impact on what he perceives is the civil rights moment of his generation.
Though always angered by injustice – particularly when it involves the shooting of unarmed black men and boys – Mr. Wallace seems more agitated than usual, one may assume the death of Mike Brown was the breaking point.
“I am racially charged not because I want to be, but because I have to be,” he writes on a double-sided piece of paper passed out during his silent protest, “I am racially charged because in certain instances, that hyper awareness may ensure that I make it home to my family at the end of the day. I am racially charged because I am not afforded the luxury to wander through life with my head in the (nonexistent) ‘post-racial America’ clouds. I see color because my color is seen, dismissed, devalued, and implicated as a threat everywhere I go. I am racially charged and if I make you uncomfortable by speaking out about it and calling attention to it, then I implore you to eradicate the ugliness I see every day in the world.”
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Thanks for reading. Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® & I’m Drumming for JUSTICE!™