There is a fucking soldier standing in the middle of the road in front of the Old State House in Boston right now waiting for protesters I fucking CANNOT
Hey, at least they’re being historically accurate! The marker for the Boston Massacre is only behind him because they don’t want tourists stopping at the spot where it actually happened, almost exactly where he is, in the middle of the street. We weren’t even able to do it there for the 250th anniversary reenactment three months ago.
In 1998 we first got to see the ds9 episode “far beyond the stars”, in which Sisko experiences violence and racism through the life of a black sci fi writer in the 1950s. 22 years later it is absolutely unacceptable that the story could have been set in 2020 and he would still have faced racism, hatred and injustice. We don’t deserve to look back at it as a “lesson from the past” because he would still have had to fear for and fight for his basic human rights - that is the reality of being black in 2020. Racism and police violence isn’t a story of the past, this is the reality we are living in right now, this is the reason why its important to fight and speak up. (This is also obviously about more than just star trek, I just wanted to make my stance clear and show my support in a way that was authentic to the content I post here. I want to make it clear that if you like my art and disagree with black lives matter, then my art is not for you.)
The top is my homestate. Michigan. Armed protestors against the stay at home order shouting in the faces of police because they want their haircuts.
The bottom is yesterday. Minnesota. More exact, Minneapolis. Miles from where I live. Protestors sitting while police show up in riot gear as they rightfully protest and demand justice for the murder of George Floyd.
I’m not the least bit shocked. But seeing the stark contrast from two places I’ve called home is so disappointing and infuriating that the racist system we live in allows for this and there’s still people who will say the protestors in Minneapolis were wrong. Just... I’m so angry the “land of the free” fails so many people. America was never the land of the free.
I want to applaud Ashley Williams, the #BlackLivesMatter protester who confronted Hillary Clinton and demanded an apology for Clinton’s use of “superpredators with no conscience and no empathy, who need to be brought to heel” when she used dog whistles to refer to Black youths as little more than animals, as she advocated for Bill Clinton’s notorious 3-Strikes crime bill (which disproportionately targeted and imprisoned Black people).
Clinton replied, “You know what? No one has ever asked me about this before. You’re the first one to ask me about it.”
Besides noting the obvious problem with Ms. Clinton apparently needing to be publicly prompted before it ever even occurred to her to apologize for saying something so casually racist, if there are people who have spoken to her about this, then I hope they feel sufficiently empowered to step forward and make Mrs. Clinton have to explain her obfuscation.
I find it very hard to believe that no one at all has ever spoken to her and never asked about this before.
And once again, all respect to Ms. Ashley Williams. Disruptive action protests take a lot more than planning and coordination - it also requires guts. I’m a soon to be 32 year old Black man who is an inch shy of 6 feet tall, tipping the scales at 185 pounds, and I seriously doubt that I would have had even half the courage needed to do what Ms. Williams so bravely did.
From Bree Newsome to Sandra Bland and beyond, my people are stepping up and speaking out, and I am so proud.
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