Black Bodies Are Human Bodies

 He traveled to my native state of Wisconsin, just miles down the country roads from where my parents are surely rolling over in their graves, to survey destruction, holding court among men who praised his preening. A world-class disgrace, he said nary a word about the destruction to the lives and loved ones of the victims of the violence he has incited since before he rose to power. 

But we won’t let him tell us what to see, or what to speak. Oh, no.

We must keep the focus on why people are marching and demonstrating and protesting and holding vigils in the first place:

We must condemn police violence against Black bodies.

Black bodies which, by the way, used to be legal property. Legal property that could be violated with torture and brutality and maim and murder by anyone with impunity. Today, though our bodies are no longer legal property, police and vigilantes can still violate Black bodies with torture and brutality and maim and murder with impunity. 

As though our bodies are still property. For you to do with whatever you want. With impunity. 

So. 

Does all property matter? Or just inanimate property?

Is this what you want for your children? Your loved ones? Yourself?

He won't even say his name. 

Jacob Blake. His kidneys, liver and intestines blown apart by seven/eight bullets unloaded into his back at close range. Remnants in his spine remain. He may never walk. Never be without pain or a colostomy bag. He may not survive, still. If so, what will be his quality of life? 

We vehemently condemn a system of policing and any sentiment whatsoever that would seek to justify that kind of brutal crime against humanity. 

That’s right. Black bodies are human bodies.

And so, yes. We vehemently condemn violence against human bodies by anyone, but most certainly by those we pay with our property taxes to serve and protect us. 

But even more than that:

We condemn an impeached autocrat who would incite that brutal violence, who would call for violence against anyone in order to divide and conquer America. A race baiter who would promote, with aggression, white supremacist nationalism and the confederacy, a failed cause of traitors and domestic terrorists. A neo-fascist who would unleash our military and weapons of warfare against the American people. 

We condemn a deluded demagogue who would downplay or deny the severity of a deadly pandemic, forcing people onto the slaughtering lines of meat factories all across America in servitude to China. Forcing students and teachers into petri-dish classrooms from kindergarten through college. 

And we condemn a hyper-corrupt tyrant who would assault, without relent, the American people with the violence of his hate and lies and baseless conspiracies, the violence of his mendacity and cruelty and inane insanities, of his voter-suppressing and election-cheating and un-Constitutional agenda, of his wagging-the-dog and fearmongering and un-American propaganda. 

We must keep the focus where it belongs. The lawless fraud in the White House is the most existential threat to the Republic in all her brief history. A mortal danger to the bodily health and economic well-being of the American people. To the environmental health of our habitat in its entirety.

He must. Be. Removed. From. Office.

Vote.