ring my sean bell

when is shooting a man 50 times not a crime? (drum roll)

when the people doing the shooting are cops and when the man getting shot is black. for those still weeping over the oj verdict, i wonder if you will shed a few tears for yet another black man denied both his life by the police and posthumous justice by the courts.

three police officers were found not guilty of murder, though somehow, it was these same three men who fired the shots which killed bell. one of the cops shot at bell 34 times. bell was unarmed. and no, black skin is not a weapon. i wish someone would tell our men in blue that seemingly obvious fact.

bell, by the way, was getting married on the same day that he was shot. well, i suppose this will improve the divorce rate.

furthermore, where are the pro-lifers when people out of the womb are put to death? they all care so much about the fetus, but living, breathing black people being murdered by killers in uniform don't seem to inspire much sympathy from them. the same goes for those killed in our imperial wars. a fetus in a stomach? a human being. a boy bombed in baghdad? an accident. collateral damage. fuck these pro-lifers, and all these other so called christians who do nothing to help the living, but claim to be pro-life.

sean bell will not come back. his life has been taken away from him. and no one will remember. years from now, people will still be bitching about how oj got away with it, but they will not speak of the thousands of white men, both in and out of uniform, who have gotten away with murdering thousands and thousands of black men.

a word about the police. ever notice how they never seem to kill some millionaire in "self defense?" weird how they never seem to "bust a cap" on some child of privilege at harvard or yale. funny how it always seems to be the same people, the poor and people of color, who get this treatment from "america's finest."

i remember a rap group exclaiming "fuck the police." this honkey would like to echo the sentiment. they do the dirty work of the elite, they help to maintain the status quo, and they routinely brutalize the oppressed. and we wonder why the poor folks in the inner city don't trust the cops. they have every right to oppose them.

yet another day is here that i am ashamed to be an american. more to the point, a white american.

and the thing is, no one knows.

no one knows.

and, as i bitch about this one, some young black kid is getting the shit kicked out of him right now by some rednecked cop.

some "innocent" rednecked cop, just doing his job.

protecting "us" from "them."

just doing his job in america in the year 2008.