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Sunday, June 28, 2020

All Over the Place:
Do Black Lives Matter?

Because of How Saddened I am by Racism

By Michael H. Brownstein


[https://youtu.be/75Giyui9ZB0]

—because of the New Orleans Massacre (1866), the Opelousas Massacre (1868), the Colfax Massacre (1873), the Carroll County Courthouse Massacre (1888), the Wilmington Insurrection (1898), the Tulsa Race Riot (1921), the Rosewood Massacre (1923), the Cicero Race Riot (1951), the Orangeburg Massacre (1968), and at least three dozen more.

—and because [a] woman decked out in one of President Donald Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” caps waved a Confederate flag at a Black Lives Matter protest in Branson, Missouri, on Sunday while she praised the Ku Klux Klan and vowed to teach hate to her grandchildren. “I’m teaching them to fuckin’ hate all of you people,” the woman, identified by the Springfield News-Leader as Kathy Bennett, said Sunday evening. “I will teach my grandkids to hate you all.” She spoke from the bed of a pickup, then climbed up into it to wave the flag, raise a fist and call out, “KKK belief!” [—
HuffPost]

White lives matter, the man said from the middle of the street,
and before I could reply, jammed on the gas, gone.
But white lives are not endangered, nor are they injured or at risk.

Tell me of a white woman – or white man – who does not resist arrest,
follows the officer’s directions, and then dies of a knee to a neck,
an avalanche of bullets to the back, a choke hold over a cigarette sale,
a beating off camera in a jailhouse, a kicking with steel-toed shoes.
You cannot find one. I did the research. There are no examples.

But a black man – or black woman – that is a question too easily answered.

Show me a town of white people who were destroyed because of rumor
and anger, jealousy and prejudice. Again – this does not happen.
But an African-American town, there are too many examples, a long list.
Show me consequences when the white mob riots, destroys buildings,
lives, crippling and executing women, men and children. For too long,
there were not any. Perhaps there still will not be. Who knows?
On the other hand, there are always consequences for their victims.

Always. A riot breaks out started by whites, people die, property is damaged
and a black man is tried for inciting a riot he had no beginning hand in.

This is not a tale of racism, this is a fable of what racism causes, impacts,
tears to threads and shreds into skins and blood to rot in forest and swamp.
No, not a fable. This is an elegy to the death and the dying, the hurt and innocent,
a poem for a battered people who suffered a holocaust across the oceans
to arrive here to become part of another holocaust that goes on and on and on –
it does not end. This is a tombstone for all of the unknown dead, the forgotten,
the lynched who did nothing wrong and the lynched who were in the wrong place
and the lynched who were burned alive and castrated and cut to bleed out.
Look at the white faces. They are celebrating. They are insanity personified.

Copyright © 2020 by Michael H. Brownstein
Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.

6 comments:

  1. Because I made the challenge to find a white man who does not resist arrest and follows directions--I received this email:

    Look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ooa7wOKHhg

    So I believe we now have one. Are there anymore?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michael?
      Haven't you had the traditional "Father's talk to his son" about how to behave if stopped by police?

      Delete
  2. The only potentially violent arrest I have ever experienced was at Balbo and Michigan in Chicago on the night they nominated Hubert Horatio Humphrey. I was filming an argument between a protester and a cop when my arms wee grabbed by cops on either side of me. I immediately said in a voice that could not be missed. "I'm not resisting! I am NOT resisting!" Whereupon I was set back on my feet. As they began walking me to their squad I told them, "OK guys, I'm not going to give you any trouble." The gave me a personal escort to my booking around the corner at 11th and State. By not panicking, remaining compliant, establishing a human relationship with the arresting officers, and especially not giving any sign of resisting probably saved me a proper beating. I think the only reason they arrested me before the shit really hit the fan that night was to make sure there was one less eye there to document the sweep to come.

    It is as Archimedes found out -- too late to teach his students. You cannot win an argument with official, threatened lethal force no matter how right your cause or how persuasive your argument.

    https://www.livius.org/sources/content/plutarch/plutarchs-marcellus/the-death-of-archimedes/

    (last paragraph)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I even got to keep my camera and filmed the other arrested protesters in the lockup. Ha ha

    https://vimeo.com/155335106

    ReplyDelete
  4. OK, OK, the challenge is still up. It seems when the young man crawled toward the police, they demanded he always have his hands on the floor as he crawled to them, but he doesn't. He reaches into what appears to be his back pocket--so he did not resist arrest, but it appears he did not follow directions.

    So I am still in search of a white man--or white woman--who is killed by the police after they do not resist arrest and they follow all of the police directions.

    ReplyDelete