I'm not watching it. 

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That's what I said before the Sunday morning I decided to finally watch the video of the traffic stop of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police.  And, while I ate my breakfast, I watched.  Remind you of anything?

 

The thousands of postcards sent to friends and familiy throughout the US of crowds gathered...people who took their lunches, packed up picnic baskets to go watch the lynchings of Black men and women during the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century. 

 

Today, if you want to grab a sub, a slice of pizza, a burger and watch the brutal beating of a Black man or watch a Black woman get a busted lip and a concussion during a traffic stop or merchant complaint, or harrased for walking down the street, or killed during the traffic stop on the way to buy a cake for their child's birthday, or humiliated standing in a bank proud to be cashing a first paycheck, or arrested as a burglar with keys opening the front door to their own house or any other harassment for...fill in the blank...you can find a recent video, and watch it...and forget it. 

 

And, accept it.  

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There weren't just five officers.

There are at least ten people right there with Tyre Nichols on that Memphis street, Castlegate, before he is taken to a hospital. When the videos were released two weeks later, millions of people from all over the world were there. By that Sunday morning, I was there.

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When, in America, did broken tail lights, speeding, eradic driving, not being quiet, being too quiet,  refusing to get out of a car, getting out of the car as commanded, running away, all unarmed, become death penalty offenses? 

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We all know the answer...none of them are.

 

I am going to face it.

Maybe, in America, being Black...even in the minds of Black police officers...is the offense.

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Is there a solution?

 

Anyone who watched saw why the other people right there, the people in their homes on that block, couldn't call the police, but, I have an uneasy feeling Tyre Nichols is dead because I let it happen.

 

I let Tyre Nichols and George Floyd and school children in Texas and Connecticut and Colorado die because I believe I have absolutely no power to make anything happen or stop happening in America.

I can work & pay, vote, watch, even protest...those are my 4 choices in America.

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From 2023 back to the year any one of us was born, these lynchings have been happening pretty much daily, even though we now, as a nation, have the technology, the money and the laws to prevent them.

 

Instead, We, the People, pay, it seems, mainly for speeches. And after speeches change nothing?

The best and brighest head to Washington DC to get rid of the tax code, get rid of public schools, make every state its own sovereign country (with outrageous taxation), and get rid of most peoples' rights?

 

Is the only way to end the plague of problems facing Americans to end political parties?

 

We also have the AI for each of us to represent ourselves within a group of united states in America.

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