Concerning Cleveland’s Easter Weekend “Facebook Killer” and Aaron Hernandez.

or, why I’ll never celebrate their, nor anybody else’s, suicide, ever.

I’m not celebrating Cleveland “Facebook Killer” Steve Stephens’ suicide, nor Aaron Hernandez’ apparent suicide. While we’re on this topic, let’s be unequivocally and unwaveringly clear: those who call suicide “cowardly” know nothing of the bravery and courage required to even contemplate choosing between one’s life and death, and are indeed cowards themselves.

How do I know this? Nobody could or would ever say it to my face. I’ve done it, and I’ve lost family to it. That being said, escaping justice is the most spineless thing a guilty person — Stephens, through his livestreamed killing of Robert Godwin, Sr., over this past Easter weekend, and Hernandez, through his conviction of first-degree murder in 2013 — could ever do. It takes maturity, redemption, possibly salvation to own up to one’s crimes.

Final two cents: don’t lose your humanity by cheering anybody’s death. Invest energy instead on mental health activism, psychiatric medical services, and suicide prevention outreach. Many criminals, before committing any illegal activity, are first victims themselves. Victims of what? Mental illness, along with its subsequent and often simultaneous social, political, economic stigmas, discrimination, compounded with and exacerbated by willful ignorance and indifference from a judgmental, uneducated greater society, crimes — in my opinion — no less than theirs.

In any case, these are unfortunate, inconvenient truths, far messier than the sanitized “I’m glad he’s dead; one less murderer for taxpayer death row dollars; who cares about him?” versions currently trending on my newsfeed, which is why I felt it deserved commentary. Also, were rehabilitation, recidivism prevention and recovery priorities for the prison industrial complex and criminal injustice systems, we wouldn’t see bloated rosters in prisons, especially in California and Texas, where they’re tripling mostly Black/Latino inmates in bunk-beds at the speed of racist light. Up until now we consume content that’s emblematic of the symptom and process. Most of it is just noise, alt-facts, post-truth, fake news. Where’s the signal? Tackling the disease requires a certain kind of messy honesty, one borne from refraining to cast the first stone, and instead rolling up our sleeves, listening, building, and doing real, hard, brave, courageous work. Love, peace, light.

new selfie, same SF Ali

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