52 years later ...

“There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.”

-Martin Luther King’s I have a dream Speech, August 28^th, 1963.

52 years later and we’re still the victims. I am terrified. I lay down at night and I think to myself; “what if that were me?” hanging from my jail cell.  Sandra Bland is now silent because of the man with the gold badge. But I will no longer silence myself to him.  The African American community is dropping one by one, each one of us becoming another statistic. How many more of us are they going to take?  We can no longer sit around and wait for justice, because the man with the gold badge is no different than the man in the hooded white robe.  I’m not going to sit around and wait for my life to be taken because I failed to turn my signal on when changing lanes. I am not going to sit around and wait for my life to be taken because HE suspects I’m doing something illegal. My life is in my hands, not his.  It is about time we realized what was going on around us.

After 52 years we are still not satisfied.  And if we continue to remain silent, then in 52 more years we will still be the victims. All of this fighting back, and rebelling against authorities isn’t going to bring Sandra back, it isn’t going to restore the life of Eric Garner, or heal the loved ones of Mike Brown. It will give HIM another reason to take us down. We’ve been fighting for years, and in the 15 years that I’ve lived I haven’t seen a change. He points the gun, we hold the torch and who wins? You don’t win justice by violence, but we can’t win it by silence either. If he could just put the gun down, and we could just put the torch down, we would both have a free hand to hold and walk the streets with together.  I shouldn’t have to be afraid of the man with the badge. And the man with the badge shouldn’t have to be afraid of me.

I pray that one day we can live out Martin Luther King’s Dream. I pray that one day we can rip the suspect label off our back, and walk home without being the next victim of police brutality. If we can’t be safe from those who are supposed to protect us, we can’t be safe at all.

A man goes to jail for stealing a candy bar, but the real criminals are walking the streets with handcuffs and guns, and yet we still remain silent. We sit and we watch as our brothers and sisters are becoming victims, instead of high school graduates. We sit and we tweet, and we text as our brothers and sisters are lying in tomb stones instead of in beds.  Sandra Bland is now gone. There is nothing I can say to bring her back. But there is nothing I CAN’T say to stop this, and make sure no one else becomes another victim, whether it be tomorrow, or 52 years from now. I will not remain silent. I will project my voice as loud as I can, because I know somehow Sandra will hear it. I can’t bring her back, but I continue what she couldn't quite finish, as though her movement never stopped. She will live on, along with her words.