Richard Smallwood speaks out on Facebook about the injustice in America
This is long.......I don't condone violence or destruction. But listen.. people are tired! As an African American boy I watched as four little girls a little older than me who were doing nothing more than what I did as a kid, going to Sunday school whose lives were taken as the Birmingham church they were in was bombed.. Although I was small I remember when young Emmett Till was killed and mutilated because he supposedly whistled at a white woman. Years later when shes got one foot in the grave she says she lied and that didnt actually happen. Ive lived through riots. I was in LA after the acquittal of the officers who mercilessly beat Rodney King and because of that the riots started. I watched my hometown DC burn. after the senseless killing of Martin Luther King. I was a freshman at Howard. So this is nothing new. We have been slaughtered, beaten and justice has escaped us. People are tired. WE are tired. The numbers of black women and men who have been killed..some in front of our eyes in this new mobile phone era by policemen are staggering, shot in their cars, killed for selling cigarettes, shot in the back...and most of the time unarmed and most of the time there was no justice for those innocent people.I I watched a video with tears In my eyes as young Ahmaud was hunted and gun downed by two white men last month.Nothing was done for THREE MONTHS although authorities knew ABOUT IT, until the video was leaked. Last month the innocent Breanna Taylor brutally killed while in her apartment IN Louisville by policemen for no reason. And now George Floyd again killed, LYNCHED in front of our eyes as a white policeman knelt on his neck, while George pleaded for his life and near his end called out for his deceased momma for help. PEOPLE ARE TIRED. This was MONDAY. Yes they were fired but as of Friday NO arrests have been made. When you continually kill a people, beat them down and they have no voice no justice after awhile they cant take it anymore. Because of that protests turns to riots and loss of property because no one will hear them.No I dont condone it but it is what it is. When u have a leader(and I use that term loosely because Im too much of a gentleman to call him EXACTLY what he is right here) of a country who when asked if he thought George was murdered, his reply isthat he " couldnt comment on it" but yet called those who demonstrated BECAUSE of the murder "thugs" and if there was any looting then there would come the shooting by the National Guard whom he would personally call. Martin Luther King said "A riot is the voice of the unheard". He wasnt condoning it, but explaining the WHYS of it. When you have no voice you fight back the only way you know how. It may not be the right way in some folks eyes but it means someway MAYBE folk WILL understand the pain we are in. If that lying woman in Central Park had not been filmed while she called the police saying that she was being accosted by an African American man. there is a large chance that Christian Cooper would have ended up like George Floyd. Listen I love God with everything that is within me, but folk we been praying since slavery and its the same thing happening. Its a part of the soil that this country was built upon...a country that was stolen from Native Americans who were slaughtered for THEIR LAND. Our ancestors are calling out from this soil . those who were lynched, burned, raped and mutilated.We are tired. Civil Rights leader Fanny Hamer said "You can pray until you faint, but unless you get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap". Im angry and my people are angry. Its gonna be more of this. We cant even try to move forward in a positive direction if the heads of our country dont care. And these poor excuses for heads of our country are supported by MANY CHRISTIAN EVANGELICALS!!!! This justice system isn't for us. it wasnt created with us in mind. There has to be major dialogue about how do we move forward in a systemic racist, country. No I dont sing the National Anthem OR play it,,it wasnt written with us in mind. At almost 72 its the SAME thing Ive seen my entire lifetime. Save your lectures, your judgment, your righteous indignation, cause you will get deleted in the twinkling of an eye. WE ARE TIRED!!!!!
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