19 Comments

Once, I heard that they setting up barricades and stuff around Louisville. I already knew what it was hitting for sadly. It's super frustrating to see what they were no actual charges. It just makes you numb to the entire process.

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I'm trying to be optimistic in that there's still a federal investigation, but it's hard right now. Sending love to all of y'all, because that's the only thing that can drive us forward along with real action.

<3

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How are y'all maintaining your mental health right now? Since the news broke this morning, all I've done is stare blankly at my inbox. I can't get anything done and it's impossible to act like everything's okay in meetings with the rest of my colleagues. Shit is absolutely exhausting. I hope everyone is hanging in there and is taking care of themselves the best they can right now.

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It's just so awful and predictable, I don't think anyone would be surprised by this. Black people get innocently killed, justice isn't done, protests are had, the state brutalises said protesters with weapons banned by the Geneva convention for use in war, the cycle continues. I guess I don't really have anything specific to say but I literally cannot comprehend what it is like, not just because I'm in a different country but mainly cause I'm white. I think one of the most important things for white people to understand, which many for some reason don't, is that your experiences *literally* cannot be the same as black people's, and that when so many express so much anguish it's time to start listening to what they say, regardless of your own experiences of the police, because I've never been stopped by an officer and one of my black friends has been stopped 10 times, including on the way to class, walking the same streets and riding the same buses in the same areas that I do. That's obviously racism, but yet it never seemingly gets talked about here in the UK. I think many people feel like it's something that happens elsewhere, laude it over as some kind of British superiority, when it couldn't be further from the truth. I think that's one positive I like to focus on to distract from the awfulness, the mobilisation around the world and the awakening in countries like Britain and France where racism by the state is rife, but never talked about and rarely acknowledged. I can't remember the exact stats but when I calculated it black people formed only 3% of our population but something like 15-20% of the people who died in police custody. Just makes me so angry.

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Honestly it just hurts man. A black woman, who is a also a first responder sleeping in her own home, gets killed by the cops. And during the press conference where this should be addressed, her name isn’t uttered once—presumably because 12 million will be forked over eventually. And some folks have the audacity to wonder why us coloreds feel less than...

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deletedSep 23, 2020Liked by Mike D. Sykes, II
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