Tony Marinho
COVID-19 records deaths approaching 420,000, infections 7,300,000, with around 13,000 recognised cases in Nigeria. Stay safe!!
We have watched with disgust, the clinically executed and casually applied, hands in pockets, callousness and disinterested face of that officer who deserves the maximum force of the law. Though there are many good police there are also more like the kneeling murderer. And they are protected by law. We all saw the participation of three police co-conspirators, acting like ‘fellow gang members’ and their refusal to prevent the murderous outcome.
We witnessed the ‘I can’t breathe’ and videoed pleas but total inability, being against the law, of the crowd of witnesses to intervene against the police action.
We stood ‘eight minutes and 46 seconds’ at Rev Al Sharpton’s request at the service for the unnecessarily dead George Floyd, with all Black Americans and probably billions all present and watching courtesy BBC, CNN etc. (thank you).
Following this murder, we witnessed an unending ‘Catalogue of Citizen Abuse Videos’ of hundreds of blacks and some whites being maximum-force manhandled, horribly held-down, tasered, attacked with excessive force using batons, shields etc. and even shot one, eight, 41 times by police.
Martin Luther King Junior explains why the Black American has not risen. The American racist and the silent co-operators or co-conspirators enacted a lethal racist scheme to disenfranchise an entire racial group. A scam so far successful. They too fought in the War of Independence, the First and Second World Wars and every war since and are dying on both sides of the Covid-19 war front line. After decimating the indigenous American, the American authorities reluctantly gave Black American nominal freedom in the 1860s but the Black American was never ever equal, not given land or access to amenities which were given the European immigrants. Most communities had a black/white housing line- hence ‘you crossed the line’ a lynching charge! MLK Junior said ‘They were given no boots but asked to pull themselves up with their bootstraps’. They were asked to rise but with no assistance. Lynching kept them in their place.
This was re-echoed by powerful words by Rev Al Sharpton at the memorial service for George Floyd when he said America has for 401 years had ‘A knee on the neck of Black Americans’ in every sphere of endeavour- health, education, employment, security, profiling arrests and a justice system deliberately weighted heavily against the Black American ensuring Black Americans cannot meet bail terms and fill jails, hospitals and mortuaries out of proportion to their numbers. He demands ‘Get Your Knee Off Our Necks’. Indeed, the authorities express fake surprise when the Black American does not arise. The authorities do express real unpleasant surprise when a few Black Americans actually rise and then plot their destruction. Imagine police having a target number of arrests of blacks. Reminds us of stories of our own uniformed authorities in Nigeria. What is it with uniforms worldwide?
Indeed, as recently as 1922, you could get a licence to kill black Americans. The last lynching was of George Floyd 2020. This uprising is against police brutality and all racism forms to stop racism once and for all! Black Americans are tortured by the need to have ‘The Talk’ with their adolescent children about how to ‘behave’ when stopped-to keep them alive!
Being back in America is associated with gross unhappiness from daily disgrace and indignities, daily delayed and poor restaurant and other services, daily racial slurs and looks and comments causing higher toxins in the body, less ability to fight disease, higher inflammation, increased diabetes cases and blood pressure and heart disease levels all adversely affecting health and mental health outcomes for American black populations. They occupy poor housing, neighbourhoods, schools and health services – all carefully calculated to keep them, though freed slaves, in perpetual poverty and service. A society which allows the glorification of police violence in silence needs to change.
There is a saying going around and a group – ‘Silence is Violence’ and ‘White Silence is Violence’; people are marching globally against police and judicial brutality. The greater dialogue must result in reform in the legal, police mentality and training, health, and education provisions everywhere.
Even business is parroting support for ‘Black Lives Matter’. ‘Corporate Silence Is Violence’. Institutional and Corporate racism and slavery must stop. The Black American community must no longer be only for profit making by Corporate America. It is give back time-big time. They provide products for African American consumption with no growth or increased self-worth. Worldwide, music has words too often steeped in derogatory words F, MF, S, N and B, integrated into all languages create low-esteem and glorifying violence especially against females worldwide.
Back home, we have all these police brutality problems and more; corruption by politicians, civil servants, contractors and middlemen and police is a major killer. The needless deaths in tens of thousands by herders, Boko Haram, ISWA, terrorists and the ritual murder, rape, kidnapping and torture and murder of thousands including executions from Dele Udoh to the rape and murder of Miss Vera Uwaila Omozuwa and Miss Bello Barakat and even infants.
We must appreciate the invention of the camera phone. It has the power to overcome lies and can stand up in court. Teach how to use it constantly.
They say silence is violence’. For Nigeria: Politicians – Get Your Knee Off Nigeria’s Neck’.
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