The above refers to three related happenings, which we do not connect.
There is much talk today, on the major media sites, about the horrible shooting in Akron, Ohio. It was a horrible shooting, but we talk about it as though it stands apart from Ukraine and Highland Park, Illinois. It is not separate from, it is a part of. All three and many more are talked about as though they are not related.
When the list of horrible shootings is given, they exclude the brutality and shootings which have given the green light to those doing the Highland Park shooting. The day before many in Highland Park settled down along the parade route to watch the July 4th parade, some 60 bullets were pumped into one man’s body by the police who are hired and paid to protect the society. Want a shock to your system? Look up the history of the police. Why were they founded. What for were they organized, etc.
It was, apparently a traffic stop and the man so shot was unarmed when he was shot. He was running away from the police for reasons only he now knows because he was killed.
The anger against African Americans is so intense in this society that whatever happened at the scene of that shooting raised that anger to a level which brought the many police, at the scene, into harmony on what they should do immediately to remove a threat to their identity.
What happened in Akron, Ohio is not equated to what happened in Highland Park, but the Highland Park type shootings will not stop, no matter what kind of laws are passed or not passed until we admit where the violence is coming from in this country. You cannot stop and correct that which you refuse to acknowledge as truth.
The day before Highland Park happened the green light was flashed into the eyes of and all over whoever did those shootings and all over those who saw what that person did as good. That green light – that huge spotlight was turned on and flashed across the country by the police who put those 60 plus bullets into the body of one African American. Someone saw that green light and acted on it in Highland Park, Illinois.
Is there something about African Americans which requires such massive violence? Are African Americans so strong, powerful, evil and such a danger that they have to be exterminated as quickly as possible and that extermination is allowed by all of us?
In America, we don’t need Concentration Camps – we have our signals that go out to those paying attention, giving them messages on what they have to do. The Highland Park killings came after the Akron Ohio killing gave the ‘go ahead’ signal.
We don’t want to deal on that level. We want to list the killings that come from places like Highland Park and others as different from those that come from Akron, Ohio and all similar places. They are all the same and instead of concentrating and lamenting our lack of laws controlling the weapons of mass destruction – as those used in these killings – we need to highlight and remove the police killings which are giving the go ahead sign to those who then come along into Highland Park and feel totally in the right as they do their thing with dozens shot and many killed.
Open our eyes, God, that we may see our contribution to such violence. Help us to put out in public, constantly, the history which has led to what is happening today. Mostly, Lord, help us to see that connection so the possibility for change can come.
We are trying to cover all of that up and in some places are even trying to make exposing such history a crime. Help us, O God, to see our own involvement and our own guilt as we go about our daily lives. Ukraine, Russia, Highland Park, Akron Ohio are all caused by the same people. They are all caused because some of us let out the evil we all share and the rest of us turn a blind eye to some, condemn others and refuse to speak the truth.
Those of us who let out our evil by condemning some acts of violence and reduce others to a foot note are just as guilty as those who pull the trigger resulting in children and so many others being killed. Help us in at least this one instance to understand the connection between the police turning a street into a bowling alley where the bowling balls are bullets and the target is a young African American man who is killed – and after we play with stories to get the one which makes the police look less guilty and shove the real guilt onto the victim, intervene in all of this dear God or we are all condemned.
Tags: #gunviolence, gun violence
