Protest ON: When Your Leaders Won’t Speak for You

First written December 23, 2014

I’m going to start what will most likely be a controversial post with my honest feelings about the murders of police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos in Brooklyn this Saturday; they were senseless and horrible deaths at the hands of a madman. On Saturday, a criminal boarded a bus to Brooklyn, picked two random police officers, and killed them and himself. By doing so, he ripped two men from their families and devastated a community.

And yet, while I am full of sadness for the loss of human life, I am also frustrated at the very political response to this event by New York City’s leaders. It comes as no surprise that the police commissioner would use the deaths of these officers to condemn the #BlackLivesMatter protests. However, it’s Bill deBlasio’s capitulation that is most disappointing. Mayor de Blasio is admittedly a politician and one at the very beginning of his term, who has to work with the police force for years to come. He has a tough job ahead of him if he doesn’t make the statements that will at least appease them in times like this.

However, the blatant hypocrisy of his statement yesterday left me flabbergasted. He refused to separate the protests from the actions of a rogue, crazy man. Instead, de Blasio urged #BlackLivesMatter protestors, many of whom have condemned the actions of the gunman, to suspend their protests in light of this tragedy.

The irony is overwhelming.

He is essentially telling people who are screaming in the street for justice, who are highlighting the consistent and cold-blooded killings of Black people, to halt their protests because the lives of police matter more. Does the reconciliation of the police force to de Blasio’s political office matter more than the cries of citizens and tax payers? It is almost too audacious and too tone-deaf to fathom. The protests for the last several months have been about the fact that Black lives matter. They are worth just as much as the lives of the people paid to protect and defend them. They are the same. Just as the families of Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos deserved to have them home, alive, and safe, so did the families of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Rekia Boyd, and hundreds of others.

I understand that police officers put their lives in danger every day and that many of them choose their profession in order to protect and serve. I understand also that such a dangerous job creates a professional brotherhood and engenders deep support from the people within its ranks. I understand that for police officers, when one of their own dies, they circle the wagons and mourn together.

What I don’t understand is this: where is the fraternal order that has promised to protect the lives of Black children? Who are the people who have decided that the lives of brown people are to be valued and defended? Who will speak for the dead, innocent men who have lost their lives at the hands of overly aggressive police? Who, on their behalf, will ask the police officers to suspend their posturing and racism to be human and apologetic?

Bill de Blasio won’t do it. The police commissioner certainly won’t do it. The only people I know defending the right of Black people to live in this country as equally human are those lying in the streets chanting “I can’t breathe.” And to them I say, protest on.