“Resisting” Arrest?

As I stepped out onto the patio in my “gentrifying” neighborhood, I was immediately struck by the sound of a black man yelling “Get the fuck off me!”

I lifted my head to see over the fence to get a better look. In the distance, I could see a black man surrounded by several cops.

I immediately went back inside to get my camera. I wanted to record the moment. Just in case.

By the time I returned to my viewing spot, I could see that several officers had surrounded the man. Suddenly, they surrounded him and were trying to wrestle him to the ground.

But, the man was undeterred. As soon as they got him on the ground, he started shouting, “Get the fuck off my back.”

At this point, I was genuinely afraid for the man.

But then something very interesting started to happen. Once people started to gather, cameras in hand, the intensity of the moment then suddenly changed.

The man was no longer shouting. He was still talking — I could hear him saing things like, “For what? For what? I did not do anything wrong.”

Once I realized that the man was no longer shouting, I assumed it was because the cops had subdued him. I was expecting to see the familiar scene — a black man, in handcuffs, surrounded by a gazillion police officers, being stuffed into the backseat of a police car.

I kept looking and looking for the familiar scene, but it never happened. The scene that unfolded instead felt like a revelation.

Rise Up Black Man

When the street cleared, I saw what appeared to be an older Black man rise up from the ground. He then calmly walked over to a bicycle, which was laying on the side of the road. This man picked up his bike and then then began quietly peddling up the street.

The cops could not get out of there quick enough. The man was barely on his bike before all the cops jumped back in their cars and sped away.

“Wow,” I was thinking to myself.

Witnessing this Black man walk away from this police encounter — with his life — caused me to consider the situation from a different perspective.

“Did this Black man just outsmart the cops?,” I was thinking to myself.

Given recent events, perhaps this man knew that yelling something like “Get the fuck off me,” to a group of police officers, would draw a crowd, which would, in turn, increase the likelihood that the encounter would be filmed.

Perhaps this man had made a calculated decision that the threat of being recorded would be his only protection from potential harm and even death.

The fear of being recorded. Exposed.

“Brilliant,” I thought to myself.

Drawing a crowd increased the likelihood that the encounter would be recorded. And, the threat of being recorded forced the cops to alter their entire approach to this situation, which ultimately resulted in this man walking away with this life.

Crowds and Cameras Change Everything.

There are many people who would condemn this man’s actions based solely on their opinion that he had “resisted arrest.” But, the question for most oppressed people of the world is: “What rights do we have if the arrest, in the first place, was unjust? It is unreasonable that Black people can be accused of resisting something that was was unlawful in the first place?

When cops are wrong for stopping us in the first place, we should not have to “bow down” to their control for completely unjustifiable reasons. In order to bring about effective police reform, the police must admit their complicity in creating a system that feeds off of a master-slave energy and dynamic.

If this arrest was not justified in the first place, I believe this man had a right to “resist” it. It is unreasonable that we have created a system that gives the police the power and authority to assert dominance and control over Black people even in cases where the officer’s actions were completely and totally wrong.

On this basis, I believe this man had a right to talk and shout as loud as he needed to in order to bring attention to his situation. On the basis of actual, real-world circumstances, it was reasonable for him to believe that he may not emerge from that police car alive. In fear for his life, he had a right to take a bold and brave stance to save his own life.

Perhaps this man logically and justifiably concluded something along these lines: “If this is going to be the last scream I ever make, this is going to be the loudest, fiercest scream I have ever made in my life.”

On that basis, maybe he just kind of went for it. Maybe, in his mind, screaming “Get the fuck off me,” to a group of men he truly believed were trying to bring harm to him, was not resisting arrest but a matter of survival.

Talk about “Survival of the Fittest.”

In my mind, this man is a hero. He recognized that his status in comparison to the cops was the very definition of oppression. The scene itself felt like the physical manifestation of years and decades and centuries of deep, profound, and rampant oppression.

Maybe this man just got sick and tired of it. Maybe, after years and years of fighting for his life at the hands of the cops, maybe he just make a decision to himself that he was just tired of it.

In that moment, maybe he said to himself, “No matter what you try to do to me, as long as I have breath in my body and blood in my veins, I will keep fighting you. If this is the last breath I will take on this Earth, I am going to use it to tell your racist ass to “Get the Hell off me. Get off my neck. And, get off my back.”

In my head, I see that old, bike-riding Black man as an angel sent here to convey the message that sometimes we must demand the release of the chains that bind us. And, when those demands are not met, we are then justified in taking actions to remove those chains ourselves.