Black life matters, only if you act like it does.
By Lorenzo Clemons
Today is the day I have had my fill of this statement as I have with other catch phrases that makes for good new tee shirts but does nothing to advance the discussion with some workable solutions.
Folks it is not the protest in Baltimore that is the problem, it is the mindless violence by a few who will never ever get it. Yes Black Life Matters so does any life! As a Black man who is active I speak to race and relating all the time, I also speak to mindless violence all the time. If Black Life Matters, then prove it by how you respond and protest. When young people go rouge, they endanger those who are there because they understand the situation and want to support the cause and cure the frustration. Why would you put them in harms way based on your mindless need of useless expression for violence. You keep alive the very thing you should be fighting against?
It is a fact that African Americans are dying at the hands of some police departments, but I still am just as angry about the senseless and mindless violence that is affecting our communities almost daily.
This weekend in Chicago's Washington Park (1 shot), Maywood (1 shot and killed), Humboldt Park (2 shot), Chicago Lawn (3 shot), West Pullman (1 shot), Auburn Gresham (1 shot), and East Garfield Park (1 shot and killed). Come on, I am with you let us burn down the neighborhood, oh, Black life Matters?
So Baltimore, Maryland must burn because Black Life Matter, yet the life of the Black female Mayor and the Black Male Police Chief who tried to show patience in this situation have been ignored and their life and existence does not matter one iota to those who loot and burn.
Know this there are those who have no value about life. They have no value about their family, their community and certainly not anyone they deem not speaking to the idiocy of the life they have embraced. I have said this time and time again, that it is time to call out these fools and the family that protects them in their violent nonsense.
We have some serious issues with education, economics and racism that must be addressed and worked on to find a solution. It does us no good to have to figure out ways to address, deal with and make sense out of these people. There is no sense in the senseless!
Hell yes I am angry when I see a shoot first, ask questions later approach to policing. It angers me because I know it can happen to me based on how I look and how I respond to some police officers. That has to be corrected without any limitation on the correcting. I know that if I was traveling in any of the before mentioned Chicago communities, I may have been shot by a stray bullet. Pick your poison my friend shot at home or abused while driving?
You think Black lives matter? In those same communities, try and call a cab, order a pizza, sit on the porch enjoying chatter with you neighbor or just trying to get a decent sleep in your own bed? Man was siting on his couch in Chicago's Roseland community and was killed by a shooter aiming at someone else. Yep black life matters?
Take me to task and tell me I don't understand the suffering; call me any name you wish it had been done before and as Maya Angelou states "still I raise".
I will continue to speak about the violence that hits home daily to those who are just trying to stay alive and not knowing if you are even safe when you make it home.
"I don't need any amen from outside the community on what I am writing just control the police, and I don't need any amen from in side the community just control you children!"
Next time someone tells you Black life matters, tell them go wear a tee shirt and be done if you are not really ready to make that statement true and workable. They will be in fashion but nothing really will be accomplished until the next tee shirt, hoody, teddy bear display is placed.
Black life matters, only if you act like it does!!!
Lorenzo Clemons
