March 24, 2018
Today, in Washington, D.C. and 800 cities around the globe, teenagers will spearhead the March for Our Lives, demanding a radical course correction in our American culture of death. The 16 and 17 year old leaders from Parkland, Florida have been inspirational in every way. They have turned their pain into power, consistently calling out the nihilism of the NRA and the craven opportunism of those who take their money. The Parkland kids use their privilege to highlight the young Black activists that the media ignores who have been protesting gun violence for years.
Just yesterday, telegenic student leader, David Hogg, blasted the media for ignoring the Black student leaders in Parkland (Source: “David Hogg Says the Media Didn’t Give Black Students a Voice,” by Parker Riley, Newsone.com, 3/23/18).
In ways large and small, our country telegraphs again and again, that far too many of our lives don’t matter, unless we are straight, white, Christian men. In Austin, Texas, a serial bomber terrorized the Black community for weeks, but was caught within 24 hours of setting off a bomb in Austin’s more affluent white community. The first response of the Austin police to the death of Anthony Stephon House was to suggest that he had bombed himself, victimizing his family a. second time.
In contrast, the bomber was described using phrases like “he was a nerd,” and the Austin police described his serial murders as “the outcry of a very challenged young man,” (Source: “Lucky Breaks, Video and Pink Gloves Led to Austin Bombing Suspect,” by Manny Fernandez, Adam Goldman and Dave Montgomery. The New York Times, 3/21/18).
Consider the initial police response to the outcry over the murder of Stephon Clark, the unarmed man killed in his own Sacramento backyard. Rather than confront their propensity to act as judge, jury and executioner when a Black man is suspected of a misdemeanor or a property crime, they claimed that he was armed with a crowbar and threatening them, until contradicted by the bodycam footage (Source: “Stephon Clark shooting. How police opened fire on an unarmed black man holding a cellphone,” by Richard Winton, Sarah Parvini and Monte Morin, The Los Angeles Times, 3/23/18).
As Lucia McBath so eloquently stated, both the victims of mass shootings and Black people murdered by the police, are victims of a “gun culture (that) encourages people to shoot first and ask questions later.” McBath also rightly points out that the NRA “openly exploits the intersection of gun culture and racism,” (Source: “Grieving mother joins March for Our Lives in the name of Stephon Clark, other black males taken by gun violence,” by Lucia McBath, USA Today, 3/14/18). The Parkland students are holding up a mirror for us and the reflection sure isn’t pretty.
#Marchforourlives
#Blacklivesmatter