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The Battle at 16th and I NW
We all do it. When we get up, we grab our phones and see what we missed in the world. It is a guilty pleasure of mine. During the lazy summer months, when I’m not teaching, I stay up late in the evening playing video games and I get up late in the morning after a half hour of me scrolling through bullshit. This particular morning, I was reading the controversy involving Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper. I forgive you when you say you don’t remember. Amy had her dog off leash. Christian, a Black Bird Watcher, asked her to put her dog back on leash. She called the cops on Christian, using the “I’m a terrified White Woman” voice on the phone in the hopes that the NYPD would, I guess, come kill him. So, yeah, people were pissed about it. I was too, a bit. What she did was wrong, but the guy was still alive. So, that morning, I scrolled and scrolled until I saw a video of a man in Minnesota being murdered by a police officer in broad daylight.
There are those that argue that any person, no matter their race, should respect the police and that, if an officer uses excessive force and someone dies because of it, that’s the price we pay to have law and order in this country and to question that is to disrespect the sacrifices of the men and women in law enforcement. To people who think that, go fuck yourselves. People who think that look at the crime in our societies and see animals hunting each other…
