“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter” – Martin Luther King
With the recent acts in Dallas and Baton Rouge, it has gotten to a point where action must take place. The relationship between black people and the police has to be dealt with before it is too late.
On July 5, two white officers shot 37 year-old black man Alton Sterling. Early Tuesday morning, members of the group called Stop the Killing followed a call they overheard on police scanners to the Triple S Food Mart in Baton Rouge. There, they filmed the shooting that has created a nationwide furor. The group’s founder, Arthur Reed, made the decision to upload the video of Sterling’s shooting on Social Media that afternoon. In an interview with the Washington Post, Reed said that his group has filmed upwards of 30 killings in Louisiana since 2001. If there have been over 30 killings in only Lousiana, why is something not being done?
The next day, Philando Castile, a black man from Minnesota, was shot after reaching for his wallet. The police officer thought he was reaching for a gun, so he shot him 4 times in the chest, killing him. His fiance filmed the shooting with the daughter in the back seat. If these “accidents” are becoming more frequent, black people will rebel. That’s what happened in Dallas on July 7th.
Micah Xavier Johnson ambushed and shot twelve police officers and two civilians in Dallas, Texas, killing five of the officers. Johnson was an Army Reserve Afghan War veteran who was reportedly angry over police shootings of black men. The shooting happened at the end of a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest against the police killings. All these events lead to the simple thought: Do blacks deserve to be treated like this?