It is a struggle to maintain hope that we will emerge from this nightmare in which our beloved country is in the grip of racist kleptocrats, but some weeks are harder than others. For Black Americans, this week has brought a stark reminder of how little our lives matter. Just yesterday in St. Louis, Officer Jason Stockley was acquitted of the murder of Anthony Lamar Smith, despite audio evidence that Stockley began his pursuit of Smith with the intent to kill him and despite DNA evidence that showed that Stockley had planted a gun in Smith’s car, to make it appear that Smith was armed. In a depressingly familiar tableau, we witnessed Smith’s mother in the post verdict press conference stating, “My soul is burning. My heart is broken.” We saw St Louis police in riot gear confronting peaceful protesters. We contrasted the response of the St. Louis police last night to the response of Charlottesville police last month when confronting armed white supremacists. While the Grand Dragon of the KKK could fire a gun at a Black counter-protester and walk away unmolested; an elderly woman who was peacefully protesting was assaulted by the St. Louis police (Source: Fox 2 News; 9/15/17).
One the same day that this unjust verdict was rendered, serial perjurer and racist martinet, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions announced the elimination of the Collaborative Reform Project, which was designed to help police departments in crisis build better relationships with the communities they serve. (Source: “Jeff Sessions is Essentially Killing a Project Designed to Build Trust Between Police and the Public,” by Dominic Holden, Buzzfeed, 9/15/17). Despite the fact that crime continues to be at record lows, Sessions is allocating those funds instead to fighting violent crime. Together with his decision late last month to lift the ban on sending military equipment to local law enforcement, it is obvious that Sessions is encouraging local police departments to act as an occupying force in Black and Brown communities, rather than as public servants charged with protecting and serving the communities in which they work. The Trump administration’s message to people of color is clear. In their eyes, we are lesser human beings to be controlled and brutalized without consequence. Our response had better be just as clear. We need to elect progressive prosecutors of color who will hold rogue police officers accountable and refuse to feed the maw of the private prison industry. We need to pass state and local legislation to ban the use of military equipment by local law enforcement. We need to demand justice, in the courts, at the ballot box, and in the streets, because the Department of Justice is anything but.