A protester explains why telling black people to calm down about police brutality is wrong
People are fed up. They’re tired of seeing police shoot and kill black men, only to be told to calm down when they get angry at what they see as another unjust killing of another black man by another police officer.
At Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where police officers killed Alton Sterling, one black woman captured the anger so many people feel when she was told to calm down in the face of a heavily armed police force:
Baton Rouge is not having it...wow pic.twitter.com/U1KcC6tIn8
— logizzle (@iRUNx_LA) July 10, 2016
"I’m hurting. My people out here are hurting," she said. "My kids … they’re going to walk these streets freely, just like everyone else can walk these streets freely. I’m not standing down."
For many people, it is bad enough that they have to suffer through the risks of simply walking down the street and catching the attention of an overly aggressive officer. But the idea future generations — their younger family members, their children, or their grandchildren — will have to go through the same thing only amplifies the injustice.
As she stated, "We have been mistreated for more than 300 years. There is blood on these streets, sir. Why are we going to continue being peaceful when they are killing my brothers and sisters?"