What We Can Learn From Korryn Gaines’ Instagram Video

Last Tuesday, I sighed, rubbed my eyes, and settled in to watch another two videos that have become staples on my Facebook feed .The first one was a video of Korryn Gaines’ traffic stop, and the second a video of a standoff she had with three officers in her house who came to serve warrants to her.

And while watching, something struck me about these videos: she was eerily calm.

In the car, she looks forward, says, “listen,” and demands for the officers registration, explains that she’s not getting out of the car, refuses to sign the ticket.

Listen.

It’s a measured, yet deafening cry.

Listen.

“You know it’s not that bad,” the officer says at one point.

Listen.

It’s a request, a plea, a demand to be heard. Gaines feels so threatened by these police officers, at one point, when they say she’ll have to get out of her car or be arrested, she says: “You will have to kill me. I promise you.”

Her body becomes the protest. Her life, the standard-bearer of justice.

It is not hard to believe that Gaines, like me and so many other black men and women, has watched every single last video of black bodies being massacred. So when she takes out her phone and starts filming, the gravity of the situation is clear. She says: “You will have to kill me.” Because she knows that when a black person turns on a phone when a police officer is around, the end result is almost always death.

At one point, she hands the camera to her five-year old son, says — “I want to make sure you record all of this. They gon try to fight me, but I want to make sure you record every part. Don’t be afraid.”

In this moment, the torch of oppression is handed from mother to son. And when she is filming in their house (where she later will die), she asks her son what the police outside want to do.

He replies soberly, “Kill us.”

It’s not a question. It’s a declarative statement.

Now, at this point, the part of me that has been raised cloaked in the safety of respectability politics, the part of me that has grown up surrounded by white people who endlessly try to convince me that the police are on my side, that part of me is apprehensive. And, I’ll be honest, a little disgusted.

I think — this is absurd. Both the officers interacting with her by her car and in her home seem to be doing their best to deescalate the situation. They don’t jump straight to violence. And Gaines did have a shotgun, after all. And so a little part of me thinks: Maybe…she deserved it?

And yet, what does it say about our police system when this black woman felt the need to buy a shotgun to protect her from the people who are supposed to be doing the protecting? Maybe Gaines was threatening the life of the officers. But it’s only because she had been reminded repeatedly of the threat they posed to her.

At the point where Gaines is clutching a shotgun to protect her life and a phone camera to protect her legacy, at the point where even her five year old son is cognizant of the fact that in Baltimore, a police badge is more synonymous with death than with safety, we have to admit that we have a policing problem.

Gaines video was unique because it revealed the depth of depressing knowledge that so many people of color live with . It revealed that we know the system we live in. We are aware of how to combat that system. And we realize that that oftentimes, to truly protest that system, we have to give our bodies up to it.

She knew what to do. She took out her phone, she took out her shotgun, she reminded her son not to be afraid, to keep filming. She looked at the officer, and she said: “You will have to kill me.”

And, disturbingly, Gaines’ prophecy came true. They did have to kill her. And we, as a collective, had to watch it happen. So the next time a police officer pulls over a black person for a broken taillight, or no licence plate tags, that person will have watched Gaines video. They will take out their phone, and they will go through the motions, just like Gaines did.

And then? Well. We’ve all watched the videos.