For Blacks, 2020 Sucks: This Week's UPDATES
Take a few minutes or so to read through this week's 7-Day Round-Up, then I will be sharing my thoughts of this past week which has been nothing but depressing.
7-Day Round-Up | |
Sunday | |
Athletes and Celebrities pay tribute to Kobe Bryant on what would have been the Basketball Legend’s 42nd Birthday. | |
Monday | |
According to ESPN, the Philadelphia 76ers have fired head coach Brett Brown after quick exit from the playoffs. | |
Tuesday | |
The Chicago Sun-Times claims that Jacob Blake, who was shot by police in Wisconsin, is paralyzed from the waist down. | |
Wednesday | |
Milwaukee Bucks boycott game in response to the Jacob Blake shooting, cause other NBA games to be postponed. | |
Thursday | |
Protesters gather outside White House ahead of the President's Republican National Convention acceptance speech. | |
Friday | |
The Commitment March: Get Your Knees Off My Neck took place on the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington. | |
Saturday | |
Former NBA All-Star and Portland Trail Blazers Legend Cliff Robinson passed away at the age of 53. | |
Where to do I begin to explain how we got to this point of the year, I'm going to discuss in my own words three surreal stories that just don't add up. I wish I could just get in front of the camera on my phone, or on my iPad, or my Computer and tell you right to your face what I'm feeling, but I know I still have a lot of planning to get before I can upload videos on YouTube. In fact, I've been thinking of start my channel in January of next year, 2021, that why I decided to to move one of my college courses from the winter to the fall, so now I have four classes to take online starting next month instead of three. This is going to be my very last semester at LaGuardia Community College and i've step one foot on that campus since that day in March when I came home to find that the NBA suspended it season due to growing concerns of the coronavirus. I'm starting to forget what that college looks like from the inside, and now I know I'm not going to finish my education at LaGuardia in a classroom with more than a dozen people. Aside from the pandemic, I've been deeply devastating by everything else that has happened this year in 2020, all of us were looking to all the exciting things that were meant to happen under normal circumstances, and if we won't living in a pandemic right now, things would be different for all of us. I wonder if the pandemic is a direct cause of the police brutalities in this country or would they have carried on by themselves, which brings us to out first story.
Last Sunday, a 29-year-old African American by the name of Jacob S. Blake was driving his car down Kenosha, Wisconsin with his three sons sitting in the backseat the whole time, he pulled his car up near a group of women who were shouting at each other on the sidewalk and Blake took no notice of them. The Kenosha police responded to a 911 call about a "domestic incident" at around 5 PM last Sunday, the person who called "said Blake wasn't supposed to be there, and that he had taken the complainant's keys and refused to give them back". Once officers arrived at the scene, they were told that Blake was attempting to steal the caller’s keys and vehicle, and that when things really got out of control, two officers starting tasing him in order to subdue him. Some watching from afar at their house saw what was happening and recording it on video, but couldn't have known what would happen next. After a scuffle between black and the Kenosha police, he walked to the driver's side of his vehicle and was followed by Officer Rusten Sheskey and another officer holding handguns in their hands. Sheskey grabbed him
when Blake opened the driver's side door and leaned in and fired seven shots towards his back. Fortunately enough, four of the seven bullets hit his back and was flown to Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin where his father announced two days after the incident that Blake was paralyzed from the waist down and that doctors do not yet know if it would be permanent. The person who recorded the incident told reporters that he heard police yelling "drop the knife", and also said, "I didn't see any weapons in his hands, he wasn't being violent". The local police union says that Blake was armed with a knife in his left hand, but officers did not initially see it, and he "forcefully fought with the officers, including putting one of them in a headlock", while ignoring orders to drop the knife. The knife they were referring to was recovered from the driver-side front floorboard of the car Blake was leaning into when he was shot in the back, it remains unclear as why he had it in his possession and if we was going to use it on the police. To me, watching a man get shot seven times is just as disturbing as seeing a man have his neck pinned to ground by the knee of a white officer or man running from the police at a Wendy's restaurant at man and getting in the back by a white officer. Like the person screaming in the background of the Jacob Blake video, I ask "Why did they shoot him so many times?" and keep in mind, his children were sitting in the backseat of the car the whole time and you winder what could be going through their mind as this is happening, they could be traumatized for life. I also wonder what was going through the mind of the person who called the police on Jacob Blake, did they know the life-threatening situation they were putting him in. It feels as though any unarmed black person will get shot for resisting arrest for the most common crimes and suffer nothing but the worst from white officers of the law, it makes you wonder "Where did all the black cops go?"
The second story we're going to discuss concerns the Protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin in the aftermath of the shooting of Jacob Blake and sparked more flames within the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement. The thing that makes these so different from the others that were caused by high-profile killings by police officers in 2020 was that it including armed civilian counter-protesters, which the media described as vigilantes. Hours after the shooting of Blake, protesters hit the streets and started burning things down such as a courthouse in Kenosha, garbage trucks, and a car dealership's lot. The protests continue for two more days and on Tuesday, August 25, they were met by those vigilantes I talked mentioned, one of them was a 17-year-old white male by the name of Kyle Rittenhouse who allegedly shot three protesters, two of which were killed. Many people were recording everything was different angles and were completely shocked by want this young man had done, in fact, even Rittenhouse couldn't people what he had done after killing his first victim, he ran off saying "I just killed somebody." People chased after him for the first killing and he started shooting back at them, someone said in one video angle that "He shot that guy in the stomach," and you can see in the videos that Rittenhouse shot someone in the left arm, causing this victim to be screaming in pain and screaming for a medic to come and help on video. As for Rittenhouse, he was not arrested by any of the Kenosha police, in fact, he even tried to turn himself and police in their vehicles just drove and acted like they didn't notice him. It was not until he returned home in Antioch, Illinois that he was arrested and charged with intentional homicide, recklessly endangering safety of others and illegal possession of a weapon. I don't understand how officers in Kenosha did not stop to question or arrest him despite members of the public shouting for him to be arrested, they were more focus on their protestors who had a right to be there and were outraged by the violence done to Jacob Blake. These indents led to something nobody could believe, multiple professional athletes refused to play any sports last week, starting with the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday, August 26, they refused to take the court for a playoff game against the Orland Magic in the NBA Bubble. This led to other NBA teams boycotting other games with some of the voting to end the season, leading to teams in the WNBA, MLB, MLS, and NHL deciding not to play their games between August 26 and August 28 out of protest, and nine NFL teams cancelled their scheduled practices on August 27. Last Friday, the NBA and its Players Association released a joint statement announcing that the NBA playoffs will resume yesterday and that the league and its players will work together on several initiatives to promote voting access, combat social injustice and racial inequality, and advocate for police reform.
Just when you fought things had finally settled down, we were hit our third and final surreal story of the week, more than 184,000 in the US have died due to COVID-19, some have died due to police brutality and gun violence, and some due to natural causes. I will never forget the night of Friday, August 28, 2020, I was about to go take a shower when I heard my mom said "That Black Panther Guy died!", in my mind I say to myself "I hope she not talking about who I think she is, I hope she's talking about some activist who worked with the Black Panthers group." But I went towards, leaned down and saw on her phone something I can't unseen, it was a report from the Associated Press saying that "‘Black Panther’ actor Chadwick Boseman dies at 43 after 4-year fight with colon cancer, representative tells AP." I checked my own phone and went to Twitter to see if it was real and it was, as I went to take my shower, all I could think about was "Oh my God, this is crazy," even my sister was in shock when I texted her an article of Chadwick Boseman's death from the "Hollywood Reporter" with a crying emoji right above it. I remember when we went to see Black Panther on Opening Night for my 22nd Birthday in 2018 and were at awe by Boseman's performance, I was excited to see him in Captain America: Civil War before this, and then I got to see him again as King T'Challa in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. Those were the only movies I knew him by, though I wasn't aware that he played Jackie Robinson in 42 and James Brown in Get On Up, and Thurgood Marshall in Marshall, he made those black icons to life on the big screen. It was not until he started playing Black Panther that he was diagnosed with stage III colon cancer in 2016, and never spoke publicly about it. During treatment, involving multiple surgeries and chemotherapy, he continued to work and completed production for several films until he died last Friday as progressed to stage IV colon cancer. Millions of fans and a ton of celebrities have expressed their grief and sadness and so have I, in fact, I might have some pictures I took when I went to see Black Panther in theaters on that cold February NYC night in 2018 which I can share. To cap off this post, I would like to say that it unreal how all of this could have happened in one week and how unfair it for actor like Chadwick Boseman to be in his prime to have died from cancer as such a young age, most people with cancer died much older. Chadwick was meant to be part of the newest chapters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and you think I be concerns with what this mean for the upcoming Black Panther sequel which has even started filming yet, and I will say to you that "I don't give a damn!" This is not about movies right now, it's about remembering a person who was not only black and not playing a black superhero on the big screen, but he was a "real-life" black superhero and the only we for such a sort period time. To King T'Challa I say "Rest in peace my King, you will not be missed, say high to Kobe, GiGi, George and Stan for us, let them know that we're all thinking about them everyday. Love you all 3000, and Wakanda Forever!"
CELEBRITY of the WEEK
Chadwick Boseman
Born: November 29, 1976
Played several historical black figures on film
Will forever be best known for playing Marvel Studios' Black Panther
#RIPBlackPanther
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