We never met, but I saw your name on countless articles and posts. A tragedy like many before you senselessly murdered by police. They are supposed to serve and protect, but instead, their overzealous nature took the law into their own hands by playing judge, jury, and executioner.
You didn’t deserve this. It does not matter whether you were resisting arrest, running away, in custody, or had a clean or a criminal past. None of it was punishable by death. It is a modern-day lynching tactic that became acceptable to the police. Their actions were unjustifiable, inexcusable, unforgivable, and strongly condemned. Your execution became a catalyst to the many protests, riots, and looting that followed.
It doesn’t matter if your life wasn’t that of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. It is not to say your death is by no means an assassination to your character in any sense, but let’s face it: you were not a sacrifice, a martyr, nor a hero. Simply put, you were a victim of police brutality. Victims cannot die for a cause or a movement they were never alive to see.
Aside from online and in papers, I did not know you nor do I care to now, because you are no longer here in the flesh. While it is open to interpretation, I’m not here for conjectures or debates, for stories and accounts will be different from human to human. Family, friends, classmates, and co-workers will have their version of who you were versus news reporters and strangers.
Make no mistake: I will continue to say your name, because black lives matter. However, it’s not your legacy left behind that I care about, but rather, in the manner in which you died is what matters most.
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This post was previously published on Equality Includes You and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Pixabay