I understand completely the furor, indeed righteous anger associated with the openly brazen acts of murder of black citizens of this country when those acts are committed by those responsible for protecting the citizens. I agree with Colin Kaepernick, as I agreed with the late, great Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith and John Carlos the Olympians of 1968 who all stood in protest against racism and oppression in the United States. I understand the problem because I have lived it and continue to live it.
However, there comes a time when I must ask my own community to take in account of how much our lives matter to us. I am fully aware that this will not be accepted by many of my friends, colleagues, cohorts and family. But it must be said. Every time a black man, woman or child dies in a drive-by shooting, gangster violence, drug related activity that life matters. Every time a baby is pulled from the uterus of a mother either by sucking, dismemberment, ingestion or injection of lethal substances or scraping the walls of the womb that life matters.
Every time a mother buries her son or daughter who has been caught up either by accident or chance in a violent episode in our community that life should matter.
Murdering black men and women in the streets by those who are entrusted to protect is without excuse. But their excesses will continue until we make it a point to protest vehemently, argue unceasingly and protect our own from our own. Black lives won’t matter to anyone unless they matter to us.
