Laserfiche WebLink
trying to subdue valid public outrage about police violence and corruption. With their curfew <br />all they showed us was that they believe that the damage to property is far more disturbing <br />to their way of living than the systemic persecution and murder of black and brown people. <br />They were telling us that we suffer too loudly, that black and brown pain is too visible, and <br />that we first must consider the windows of these businesses before our lives. <br />Implying that we should instead be quiet and docile as police continue to terrorize people <br />on the street, and to take a number as we wait for the next meeting to take our turn <br />expressing our generational pain, hurt, and distress in under 3 minutes, for them to offer <br />just more reforms. <br />The council is offering us crumbs with their Obama Foundation's Mayor Pledge. Obama is <br />a centrist, moderate. The former deporter-in-chief, he deported more immigrants during his <br />terms than any other president before him. Obama also stood by and did nothing as <br />protesters at Standing Rock, North Dakota, were shot with rubber bullets, attacked with <br />dogs, and hosed down in freezing temperatures by police for protecting their sacred land <br />from being desecrated by a toxic pipeline that like many pipelines before it is destined to <br />break and contaminate their water. Obama also told the nation that Colin Kapernick and <br />those joining in taking a knee ought to consider how it can hurt veteran's feelings when they <br />see people peacefully protesting the national anthem. Obama also had the audacity to say <br />that he felt "no sympathy" for those who would riot in their cities after Mike Brown was <br />murdered. The same cities where public spaces and resources are being cut, where there <br />is no secure affordable housing, and police get bigger and more militarized. <br />The irony is that I do recall that on every July 4th the nation celebrates the American <br />revolution, fondly remembering the famous Boston Tea Party that catalyzed the American <br />revolution. This event that is so highly revered in American history centers the useful tactic <br />of destruction of property as a means of protest and expressing their outrage over the <br />import taxes on tea. <br />There's no greater evidence of a racist, imperialist, capitalist society than the fact that <br />Americans can celebrate each year the violent American revolution that occurred from an <br />act of vandalism, to then turn your back on black and brown people protesting being <br />murdered by the state. <br />Past peaceful liberation leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., saw that "riots are the voice of <br />the unheard". Looking back on what some of histories' prolific liberation movements have <br />looked like, for as long as racist, imperialist, capitalist, cisgender, hetero -patriarchy has <br />extised, the movement for black lives, indigenous sovereignty, and liberation for all has <br />been possible because of such things as riots. Do you recall the Storming of Bastille, a <br />medieval fortress in Paris, France, that ignited the French Revolution? During slavery, <br />