For Terence
It’s like some evil game
nightmare edition
of Simon says
Why do so many people
who look like me
comb over the footage,
looking for a misstep?
The questions begin,
inevitable
hateful
cloaked in willful blindness
the cloak victim-blaming
always wears:
“Yeah but–was he
fully complying?
Why didn’t he
comply exactly?”
The wrong questions,
again
and again,
world without end
Just ask Charles Kinsey
if hands up & unarmed
& lying on your back
on the road
begging for reason
will keep a black man from being
shot if someone decides
he looks like a threat
because he is breathing
Like someone decided
12-year-old
Tamir was a threat,
sitting alone, dreaming
little-boy dreams
that will never come true.
I dream of a world where
people who look like me
will ask vastly different questions,
harder ones,
braver ones,
again and again
until this world ends
And a new world opens
one where police will be expected
to protect and serve
a father of four
car broken down
who has his hands in the air
Where de-escalation
is the absolute expectation
A world where
Terence Crutcher
would still be here
heart beating,
breathing,
alive.
#1 by Dawn D on September 23, 2016 - 4:01 am
Yes.
Thank you for writing this.
There are people like you who ask these questions. Hopefully, they become more and more numerous.
XO
#2 by Elaine Olund on September 23, 2016 - 10:41 pm
Thank you, Dawn, for reading and being a caring, thoughtful person.