The Lost Files: December 2015

A while back I promised you guys I would publish some of my thoughts I wasn't brave enough to share with you in the past. I'm making good on that today. So here is an uncut, unedited entry I started on December 13, 2015 and never quite finished. Perhaps because this story is still playing out on cell phones, laptops, and TV screens across the country. Enjoy.

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I should be asleep. I want to be. But I can’t. I have thirty seven names running through my head, reminding me that threat of terrorism is now my way of life.

3SB:

• I was in tenth grade when 9/11 happened.
• I went to a hoity toity prep school in Gates Mills
• I lived in East Cleveland.

The juxtaposition of my ‘normal’, neighborhood life and the brave new world that was Hawken was never made more clear than on September 11, 2001. I was sitting in the computer lab when an image of the blazing twin towers enveloped the screen. We all thought it was yet another cleverly executed prank pulled off by our then anonymous student hacker- a disruptive f*(@ you towards the establishment of regimented block scheduling and standardized testing.

By the time the second plane hit, we realized this was no laughing matter. I should say my mind went immediately to the safety of ,my family- my Aunt worked downtown and Cleveland had been listed as a potential target city, but I was sixteen and in love with the idea of love, so my first thoughts were of Jerry X, a businessman’s son with a poetic soul who was doing his senior project in New York City.

My concept of the world was embarrassingly small at the time. New York City to me meant right next door to the Twin Towers, maybe even in the Twin Towers. Jerry’s Dad was an Important Man, so his finance internship had to bring him to the Twin Towers on an almost daily basis, my juvenile mind reasoned.

My campus was locked down. Terrified parents were demanding the school send us home, but for our safety, we were confined to the building. Cell phones, which were still pretty much a new thing, were down. No one knew anything except that the TERROR ALERT was red.

School lifted the lockdown eventually and sent us all home. Jerry X was fine and so was my aunt. Our trip to the International  Choral Festival in Prague was canceled due to safety concerns. And there was an evening, and there was a morning, a new day.

Life went on. At least, it did in my neighborhood. There was no fear of terrorist retaliation in EC. We knew our worth as victims was equal to our worth as citizens: zero.

Even at sixteen years old I was able to grasp the simple concept of relative danger: I felt safer at home than I did at school.

Fear is an interesting thing: the amount you feel is directly relative to the perceived feasibility of the threat to you and your close associates. For white America, the fear of foreign terrorism is salient. Their status as default Americans makes them likely targets for the mentally disturbed subset of extremist ideologues to vent their hatred on.

For black America, the threat of domestic terrorism is much more primary than foreign extremism, the probability of being killed by police in one’s own neighborhood far more tangible than the imagined peril of being blown up by the owner of the local bodega.

This is MY ISIS, and it’s nothing new.

Your terrorists are hunted down through means ethical and unethical. Ours are placed on paid administrative leave. Think about that for a minute. People suspected of domestic terrorism are actually paid by taxpayers while their involvement is decided.

Yeah, that just happens. Everyday.

Where is the paid leave for Syed Farook? Oh wait, he’s dead.

His voice is just one of the forty I have haunting my brain, the unnamed masses that have been killed by police this month.

Did I say thirty seven earlier? Oh yeah, it’s gone up since I started writing.

I have a friend, a mother figure of sorts, whose nephew was killed by police a few days ago. I went online to find out more details about the case, having heard about it through another friend and not wanting to pry secondhand. I wanted to find his name so I could pray for his family and friends.

Instead, I found forty pair of sightless eyes staring at me in accusation.

As I wrote down the names of these men and women aged 18 to 66, the quiet seething storm of rage began to brew in me.

Prayer was not enough. Writing their names not enough. Blogging (even outside the box), is not enough. Justice, like international terrorism seems a distant dream when faced with stories like that of Robert Hinton, a former Rikers inmate who was awarded a sizable settlement when correctional officers hogtied and beat him for fun.

Hinton’s case led to five firings and nearly half a million in cold, hard cash from the city. Unfortunately, Hinton was killed just blocks away from Rikers, weeks before he was to receive his remunerations check.

He was a father. He was a fighter. He was a nigger.

Only I am too. How am I supposed to sleep knowing the terrorists are out there, laying in wait for me and my people,  with guns and the full support of the United States government?

I can’t. I promised to Choose Change, but in the face of such insurmountable odds, beneath the clouds of structural racism, what woman can see the silver lining?

The forty men and women who have lost their lives at the hands of police in December are victims 1088-1127 since January of this year- eight times the amount of people killed in the Paris attacks. How much more are we supposed to take? Which black body will be the last straw, the spark that sends a deeply racially divided country up in flames?

The issue seems too large, and the more I discover, the less I realize I knew. I’m spiraling out, or, as my bestie would say, going down the rabbit hole. I find myself on the FBI vault, reading reports about how white supremacist organizations have been infiltrating police stations since 2006 using a technique the Feds call ‘ghost-skinning’. To further complicate matters, the same prosecutors that depend on police cooperation to win cases are responsible for bringing charges against the very officers who ensure their paychecks.

The system has not been corrupted, it is corrupt. Policing in the United States is rooted in the control and dominion over brown bodies. According to encyclopedia.com, the colonies relied mainly on a system of community policing called night watches.

“In addition to night watch systems, there were sheriffs appointed by the governor and constables elected by the people. These individuals were responsible for maintaining order and providing other services. [Researchers] Nalla and Newman have described the following as problems plaguing colonial cities that were considered the responsibility of police: controlling slaves and Indians; maintaining order; regulating specialized functions such as selling in the market and delivering goods; maintaining health and sanitation; managing pests and other animals; ensuring the orderly use of streets by vehicles; controlling liquor, gambling, vice, and weapons; and keeping watch for fires.”

Note that the primary responsibility of our earliest police officers was to control black and brown bodies. The racial residue from the institution’s inception persists in modern day, reminding me that black and brown bodies have not been criminalized- they are (and always have been) criminal.

The highly militarized tactics we employ in policing black and brown bodies have become the proverbial ‘backfiring gun’ in America’s face. Out of the 1,140  Americans killed by police so far this year, more than half of them were white. Most were Christians. Eighteen were children. This is not Justice.

I’m used to fighting the system. I’ve been doing it all my life. Reality has tempered my idealism to the point where I am no longer surprised by Pyrrhic victories. But I have no idea what to do when the system itself is the problem, when there is no victory, hollow or otherwise, to be had. If White lives don’t matter-- if Jeremy Mardis’ life doesn’t matter, black and brown lives don’t stand a chance.

I’m ready to give up when a scripture comes to mind: ““Be strong and courageous, and do the work. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you until all the work... is finished.” (1 Chronicles 28:20) .

I chose change and I’m sticking to it if the police it kills me. I don’t have any answers yet,  just a burning feeling in my gut and plenty of questions. I force myself to lay down, zen out, and get some rest before sunrise. I’m going to need it. I’ve got work to do.

12.30.15

I walked away from this hoping that prayer and a steady diet of positive quotes would make things better. I even started another post about women and politics (my number two and three favorites to write about) and why Hillary will never be President.

I had the best of intentions, I promise. But then the Sandra Bland verdict came out. I am reminded of Roxane Gay’s eloquently condemning op ed for the Times last July where she said: “As a black woman, I feel this tragedy through the marrow of my bones. We all should, regardless of the identities we inhabit.”

Two days later, the Tamir Rice verdict was released.

This visceral loss is no longer something I can continue to ‘wait for an appropriate time’ to discuss. I am both unwilling and unable to be that patient.

Writers like Roxane Gay and Ta Nehisi Coates have the cloak of publicity to shield them from recompense when writing about the physicality of racism. Somehow, I doubt my meager readership qualifies as sufficient insulation. So when I speak about Sandra Bland, I do it with full cognizance that I am Sandra Bland, that if I am killed, no justice is forthcoming for my corpse, and that in some ways people will feel that I was asking for it.

I’m going to do it anyway. I’m going to keep at it because while death is a certainty, living free is not.