Once, I was a teenager, and I believed in injustices, change, brevity, and voting. I made signs for causes and sewed them to my backpack, not even realizing how lost they became in all the band patches. I felt in my heart that I could change things for the better, and that my patches and signs and statements written in sharpie were making an impact at my all-white, cornbread christian school. In retrospect, the radical in was the most passive aggressive intolerant shithead I knew. I'm surprised I was popular; I was an adamant atheist (still am), my views leaned far-left-of-center, and in my speech class I rallied on pro-choice to an audience of no-one, much to my teachers chagrin (and my principal, who was also my mother, but had to suspend me no less due to pressure from the board, but at home stood firm behind my belief to stand firm in my belief).
Life took me different ways afterwards: I've seen journalists beheaded before, so this one was no shock. Real bloodshed, the kind that makes you cringe, fails to phase me or elicit an emotion. Once, I saw a childs arm lying on the side of the road as I was eating a snickers bar, and the only peculiar thought I had involved wondering where the rest of the child went.
Don't worry. I'm not heartless. I just died a long time ago without being killed.
You know, at work tonight, a co-worker with a slightly morbid curiousity came to me in tears stating she found the video of the journalist on reddit. She sobbed and cried into my shoulder in the break room and told me how horrible it was, how shocking humanity becomes in our depraved beliefs. I held her and I told her I know. She asked me, eyes puffy and red, "Do you know what the most horrible part was?"
I looked back into her eyes, hard and firm, and said, "Yes. It's not a scream. It's a gargle."
That was a side story. A pointless one, but one that happened tonight, and I guess I'm glad I can comfort those who need it when they need it.
This brings me to Ferguson, Missouri. I fucking hate that people call it, "Ferguson." It's not about the town. It's about Michael Brown. Regardless if you love him, you hate him, if he held guns in front of camera's and smoked joints, threatened people, or whatever, he was still a human being that was gunned down by a law-enforcement officer.
I don't know the particulars of this case and do not profess to know. He could be guilty as shit and the officer could be justified. The officer could be a cold-blooded killer on paid vacation, but something about this really woke me up, resonated deep within my soul.
I had one singular thought, hitting me in the face like a rubber bullet: The Police Officers of today, as a whole, are not the heroes my father, my grandfather, my stepfather, and my mother were.
That's real. It hit home. I wouldn't ask a police officer for help much less directions if I didn't have to approach him. I'm scared of them, even though I'm not doing anything wrong. If Easy E were still alive, I have no doubt the police would've killed him.
What incited and rekindled this rage, however, is not police brutality, racism, etc etc. It's freedom of press. Period. If you are in a "Protest Area," you are protesting absolutely nothing. If you are in an "Approved First Amendment Area" you are far away from anyone that gives a shit or a public that cares. A couple of times this week, I was working from 2:00pm-06:00am shifts, and overnight when the planes were tucked in and our pilots were sleeping, to my dismay, the Ferguson Police Department and National Guard demanded the media leave due to safety concerns.
Fortunately, as I do not believe a goddamn thing I read from Corporate Media America, I found a live stream from several journalists with Go Pro Camera's that were live streaming, thanks to our friends in the "evil" Anonymous. I watched in horror, live, as these journalists were tear-gassed even after showing their media credentials.
Two things here: 1. Media should never have to gain a credential from those they are reporting on. 2. Tear gas, interestingly enough, is banned under the Geneva Convention as a Chemical Weapon, and ratified under several international and NATO treaties as such. However, there is a provision that allows countries to use it to "quell domestic disturbances."
A Chemical Weapon. On US Soil.
You tell me who the terrorists are.
I'm grateful for those journalist brave enough to stay in the town and report what is really happening. These are defenders of freedom. They are heroes. They are patriots. They are also silenced. They are gassed. They are afraid.
They need our support more than ever.
*Every reporter that I followed a broadcast live-stream was arrested within forty-five minutes
These are photo's from my city tonight.
During our live 11 o'clock news address.
This is the truest statement I've ever read. It starts with me. It starts with you. Fuck your television.
Tomorrow, I'm flying to St. Louis to try and do my part.
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