Breonna Taylor Would've Been 27 Today
Say Her Name. | #TC69
Please join me in celebrating the life of Breonna Taylor on what would have been her 27th birthday today. Then, sign the petition below demanding the three officers that killed her be arrested and charged immediately for their crimes. #BlackLivesMatter
The planet watched on as the President of the United States used bullets and chemical weapons to disperse a crowd of peacefully assembled Americans near St. John’s Episcopal Church. The expulsion included at least one Episcopal priest and a seminarian from the church’s patio. In order to propagate a facade of strength, he tore apart what little moral authority the presidency still retained.
Protestants are pissed. Even Pope Francis said Donald Trump was not a Christian.
“He did not pray,” said Mariann E. Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington. “He did not mention George Floyd, he did not mention the agony of people who have been subjected to this kind of horrific expression of racism and white supremacy for hundreds of years. Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence. We need moral leadership, and he’s done everything to divide us.”
Our allies are horrified, our enemies are thrilled, and our people are exhausted.
As a nation, we’ve been hypocrites from the jump. The founders proclaimed that “all men are created equal,” as a slave poured their lemonade.
It’s the canyon we have never been able to cross. But, not from a lack of trying.
There have been voices from the beginning speaking truth to our hypocrisy, to our “Original Sin,” but never has there been a collective will great enough to truly force America’s hand. We fought an entire industrial war to end the menace of slavery only to capitulate to Southern mythology due to imperial complacency (aka Whiny Whites).
During Reconstruction, Northerners simply got tired of defending Black people and believed they had “done enough.” So, they went home.
During the Civil Rights Movement, white folks decided (again) that they had made enough concessions to Black people and quickly began chipping away at hard-fought victories: Affirmative Action and Voting Rights, in particular.
During the Black Lives Matter movement – where we find ourselves today – white people want to say that the “riots” are the “wrong way” as if Black people have not exhausted every other avenue imaginable. Thrice. Only to be ignored and chastised.
Especially when we know, white supremacists are posing as BLM protesters and anti-fascists to trigger violent unrest! They know White America is lazy and always looking for an off-ramp to avoid supporting progress.
That’s why, even though 74 percent of Americans view George Floyd’s death as an underlying racial justice problem in the United States – a more than 30 point increase from December 2014 following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner when only 43 percent of Americans saw signs of systemic problems – I’m not confident we’ll see long-term change. (Graphic: ABC News)
Why? Because the world is getting more authoritarian by the day.
Let’s put our own fascism into perspective by looking at the state violations of our precious First Amendment in just the last week.
There have been 148 arrests or attacks on media in the United States since May 28, including being shot at by police with rubber bullets, targeted with tear gas by authorities or assaulted by protesters. Australia, a notable US ally, has begun an investigation on an attack on two of its journalists.
Our president’s response was to threaten to deploy the US military domestically with-or-without a state’s governor’s consent via the Insurrection and Posse Comitatus Acts. During his photo-op, Trump all but declared war on the American people, threatening to use whatever means necessary to suppress the uprisings across the country.
Luckily, the president does not have the Pentagon on his side.
In an unexpected letter, General James Mattis condemned Trump’s actions and said, “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try.” Soon after, former chief of staff General John Kelly announced he agreed with General Mattis. Even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark A. Milley, has cautioned President Trump against invoking the Insurrection Act, stressing to the president that he will be politically humiliated when swaths high-ranking officials refuse his orders.
People that push back against Trump never remain in their positions long, and I don’t suspect General Milley will be any different. Keeping Caesar at bay is no easy task.
However – for now – we must focus on making our cities and states safer places to live for Black people. There are some promising responses to the demonstrations we’re seeing across the United States, including:
Atlanta, Georgia Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms fired two police officers who used excessive force in the arrest of two young Black men during the curfew.
Buffalo, New York police suspended two officers shown on video shoving a 75-year-old protester to the ground, causing him to hit his head on the sidewalk and suffer a serious head injury. In protest, 57 officers – the department’s entire emergency response team – resigned from the squad.
Ferguson, Missouri elected Ella Jones as its first Black mayor and first female mayor. In 2015, she was also the first Black woman elected to the city council following the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown sparked protests that brought national attention to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Los Angeles, California announced it will cut $100–150 million from its police budget and reinvest that money into the Black community. However, it is a drop in a bucket of the LAPD’s $1.86 billion annual budget.
Louisville, Kentucky Mayor Greg Fischer fired the city’s police chief after officers had their body cameras turned off while they fatally shot black business owner David McAtee.
Minneapolis, Minnesota councilmembers called for the “dismantling of the police force” and to replace it with a “transformative new mode of public safety.”
Richmond, Virginia, Mayor Levar Stoney apologized after police fired tear gas at peaceful protesters before curfew.
San Francisco’s Mayor London Breed and District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton announced they are looking into ways funds from SFPD could be reinvested into the City’s Black communities.
Stay safe and healthy, beautiful people. And, thanks for reading.
If you’re seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can subscribe here.
xoxo,
Kyle (@kgborland)
Actions to Take Today to Support the Movement
Begin your personal anti-racist education. It’s no one job to educate you, but you’re own. As of today, you can listen to Ibram X. Kendi’s “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America”on Spotify for free. (I started it this morning and – even as someone who hates audiobooks – I haven’t been able to stop listening.)
Donate to Black Lives Matter, the LGBTQ Freedom Fund, the National Bail Fund Network, orShowing Up For Racial Justice. Check out this list for more causes!
Engage with Black artists that showcase Black vitality and identity, not just Black pain. Promote them, too! Also, consider supporting nonprofits that empower Black storytellers, such as Kimbilio Fiction, Cave Canem, the Rhode Island Writers Colony, and the Hurston/Wright Foundation.
Follow this BLM doc for a growing list of comprehensive actions and resources.
If you can shoot Martin, you can shoot all of us. And there's nothing in your record to indicate you won't, or anything that would prevent you from doing it. That will be the beginning of the end, if you do, and that knowledge will be all that will hold your hand. Because one no longer believes, you see—I don't any longer believe, and not many black people in this country can afford to believe— any longer a word you say. I don't believe in the morality of this people at all. I don't believe you do the right thing because you think it's the right thing. I think you may be forced to do it because it will be the expedient thing. Which is good enough
It is the people and their representatives who are inciting to riot, not Stokely, not Martin, not Malcolm, not Medgar. And you will go on like this until you will find yourself in a place from which you can't turn back, where indeed you may be already. So, if Martin's death has reached the conscience of a nation, well then it's a great moral triumph in the history of mankind, but it's very unlikely that it has.
It's the proof of their guilt, and the proof of their relief. What they don't know is that for every Martin they shoot there will be ten others. You already miss Malcolm and wish he were here.
White people cooling it means a very simple thing. Black power frightens them. White power doesn't frighten them. Stokely is not, you know, bombing a country out of existence. Nor menacing your children. White power is doing that. White people have to accept their history and their actual circumstances, and they won't. Not without a miracle they won't. Goodwill won't do it. One's got to face the fact that we police the globe–we, the Americans, police the globe for a very good reason. We, like the South African black miners, know exactly what they're protecting when you talk about the free world.
(James Baldwin with Bayard Rustin at the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery;
Stephen F. Somerstein | Getty Images)This is the message we're trying to get across; we don't need you to take care of us. Good Lord, we can't afford to have you take care of us any longer! Look what you've done. To us. And to yourselves in taking care of us. No. I think the black people in this country should run their own schools, and run their own police force. Because you can't do it. All you can do I bring in tanks and tear gas—and call the National Guard when it gets too tight. And think you can fight a civil war and a global war at the same time.
People accuse me of being a doom-monger. I'm not a doom-monger. If you don't look at it, you can't change it. You've got to look at it. And at certain times it cannot be more grim. If we don't look at it, we won't. If we don't change it, we're going to die. We're going to perish, every single one of is. That's a tall order, a hard, hard bill to pay; but you have been accumulating it for a very long time. And now the bill is in. It is in for you and your children, and it is in all over the world. If you can't pay your bill. There's nothing more that you can do to me, nothing more at all. When you, in the person of your President, assure me that you will not tolerate any more violence, you may think that frightens me. People don't get frightened when they heard that, they get mad.
And whereas you're afraid to die, I'm not.
– James Baldwin, in Esquire's July 1968 issue, published just after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., the magazine talked to James Baldwin about the state of race relations in the country. (Image: Ralph Gatti; Getty Images)
