I'm looking out the window, but, out of the corner of my eye, I see the driver's right arm reach out. The volume now is so loud I think there must be speakers somewhere behind me. Doesn't this qualify as a form of torture?
Then I see the remains of something extraordinary. I strain against the loudness of the radio to think on what I'm seeing outside the van window.
In the wake of the police shooting of a 28-year old Jacob Blake, on August 23, 2020, ordinary citizens Black and white, along with Black Lives Matter (BLM) and other community organizations from Milwaukee, protested in the streets of Kenosha. The protests in downtown and in the Uptown area went on for days and drew not only outraged allies to the cause of justice and organizers and activist-minded citizens, but also militia groups. Some businesses and vehicles were set ablaze. Owners of downtown businesses began boarding up doors and windows.
Read the dissemination campaign on right-wing news sites. The message is, the Black Lives Matter activists are the agents of violence! BLM activists are looters!
There's a reason to discredit activist for justice, to disseminate ignorance, to ignore the presence of armed militia groups, and it is to deny white violence and at the same time, justify white violence.
Since August 23, 2020, I've had only one conversation with a white resident about George Floyd, about the difficulty we both had in watching Floyd succumb to eight minutes and forty-six seconds of Derek Chauvin's knee on his neck. Only one person! No one has spoken to me about Jacob Blake right here in Kenosha!
Was Floyd actually murdered? Did the Kenosha Police really shoot Blake? Really?
Gaslighting began as soon as the last bullet hit Blake's body! The harassment escalated . During the days of protests, residents where I lived at the time, tried to "educate" me about Black people, "your people," destroying Kenosha. "Looters!, Looters! Looters!" Looting, consequential looting, has been an American pastime.
On a grand imperialist scale with insurmountable damage, lives have been lost from Africa, to the Philippines, to Chile" For a barrel of oil from Saudi Arabia, how many innocent children had their lives stolen in Yemen last week, last month, last year?
Nonetheless, the narrative of Black and Latinx "looting" goes hand-in-hand with unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. The perception of a rampant conspiracy instigated by the "left" on behalf of people of color serves to stir in white Americans a fear that their very existence will be snuffed out by "aliens," "hulks," "terrorists."
Black lives matter because in America it doesn't matter, and whites in those red counties and states throughout America know this in their hearts. We know from years of reading student papers that the dining room table is a place where the word, "n-word," is uttered frequently. The "absent" subject conjures a landscape of the familiar.
For more than 70 million Americans, the lives of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous threatens the stability of the United States itself!
No one in this sea of red is willing to concede a loss!
In the meantime, in the City of Kenosha, "a third of Black residents live below the poverty line," according to a National Public Radio (NPR) report, many earning, when there's a job, half of the earnings of white workers. In Kenosha, there's a lack of jobs, and opportunities are lacking."
The report continues: "It's not just that Black Kenoshans are worse off than their white neighbors; it's that they're worse off than almost anywhere else in the country on almost every measure."
There's a history of "poor relations with Kenosha Police, according to Black residents interviewed. And these residents notice that man in the White House "inciting hate."
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