Atatiana's father died two weeks after that bullet struck his daughter, ending her life.
Heart failure, for him.
Erica Garner, the 27-year-old daughter of Eric Garner, died of a heart attack in 2017, three years after her father is choked to death by several police officers in New York.
It's all about being black in America. And no matter how many family members and lawyers we can muster to surround the immediate family, the damage is done when the politicians vote for war, or speak of waging "just wars", and the news media is 24-7, raking in the profits from staging "breaking-news" debates that are supposed to represent the hearts and minds of the American public.
Politicians and pundits do just that. In tangent. That is, focus on the hearts and minds of the American people. That's what's worth tweaking to meet the ever-growing demands of the corporate class.
Don't think about all the 8-year-old black boys who daily witness their parents dragged off by ICE or the local police. Or worse, deported. Or shot dead without so much as a warning. So not one candidate was asked anything about Atatiana's mother.
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During the years I taught literature and cultural theory (race, women, and class) in English departments, I was under pressure not to offend white students. No one mentioned students of color. How about these paying students?
It was the white students that mattered. The white students who are not to be made to feel "uncomfortable" by you and your subject matter. Even your scholarship, said one chair, will be of no concern to us!
What is always sacrificed if not the matter that is our lives, that is America's uncomfortable history? Where's the demand for truth?
Biden and Warren are about the business of comforting the angry Americans--when not doing the bidding of neo-liberalism. There's little room in that agenda for anything else.
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The other day, at a rally for climate-change protesters, I hear the actor and activist Martin Sheen tell this story about an "Irish" guy. But I'm sure it could be anyone.
He's reaches heaven and is asked a question, "Where are your scars?"
"Scars?"
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