[news] [soa] If I Get Shot by the Police

Sat Jul 3 12:56:07 PDT 2004

http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2004/07/146789.php

 http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2004/07/27563.php

If I Get Shot by the Police

    Maybe the tempest of blue-on-black homicide hasnt rained down on
    you. ... burying hope with one hand and exhuming a twisted justice
    with the other. As a black man, whatever that means, Id better give
    you my take on things. If I get shot by the police, youll never hear
    it like it happened. If I get shot by the police, you should know
    that I wasnt a drug dealer, an ex-felon, or an addict. Better still,
    you should know that it doesnt matter. In my life, I met countless
    men and women whod been in each of those places. All had many things
    to teach me. 

Submitted by: Michelle Gross to Michael Novick
================================

*If I Get Shot by the Police
By Adam Bahner
*http://www.blackcommentator.com/95/95_guest_shot.html

Maybe the tempest of blue-on-black homicide hasnt rained down on you.
But the police slayings of unarmed black men that continue to grip
America are a sinister eulogy; burying hope with one hand and exhuming a
twisted justice with the other. As a black man, whatever that means, Id
better give you my take on things. If I get shot by the police, youll
never hear it like it happened.

If I get shot by the police, you should know that I wasnt a drug dealer,
an ex-felon, or an addict. Better still, you should know that it doesnt
matter. In my life, I met countless men and women whod been in each of
those places. All had many things to teach me.

No matter what they say if I get shot by the police, I wasnt brandishing
a firearm. I wasnt being aggressive. I may have been listening to music
with a beat, but I wasnt a thug. I repeat: I wasnt a thug. Of course,
nobody can be reduced to a slur.

Who is a thug anyway? A boy-made-man
by violent urban divestment? A boy whose image-world became a temple of
saccharine Eurocentric consumerism? A boy who saw no intelligent visions
of himself? An exile whose neighborhood was run-down, torn-down,
rebuilt, and gentrified without him inside? Know that I tried to make a
difference in these issues. I tried to add my nuts and bolts to Lowells
scaffold of truth.

If I get shot by the police, it wont be called a Musician Shooting,a
Composer Shooting,or a Vocalist Shooting.The headlines wont say Orator
Shooting,Scholar Shooting,Pianist ShootingSuperb Cook Shooting,or
Loving Uncle Shooting.The headlines wont mention me at all. Theyll say
Police Shooting,as though it makes no difference whether I was a man or
a fire hydrant; as long as I got shot by a badge.

Your television set wont say an author was shot by the police this
evening.Only a man,a suspect,or a resident.I wont have an occupation,
because that evokes dignity and worth. Only the police will be named by
their occupation; to shoot defective humans like me. The newsreels will
make real this fantasy. Dont buy the spin if I get shot by the police.

I wont be gunned down,because gunning downaffirms the victim.
Shootingaffirms the perpetrator. Police officers get gunned down,but
others just get shot by them. Equal tragedy will get unequal rhetoric.
Beware of this if I get shot by the police.

publisher@ blackcommentator.com

There will be no context if I get shot by the police.

Ill be an anomaly. A trivia. A statistic. Time will
pass. Ill be uttered at someones kitchen table during a TV commercial:
Remember the guy they shot that year? No, the other one.Your local paper
wont situate me in the history of police brutality. It wont be delivered
with shrink-wrapped Cliffs Notes to the legacy of American ethnic
cleansing.

Every February, if I get shot by the police, I wont be acknowledged on
the intercom at your local grocery chain. I wont appear next to
sanitized, neutralized, and unrealized caricatures of Carver, Parks, and
King. I wont be in the fifteen-second-spots on your local network
affiliates that celebrate Black History. I wont be a topic as
politicians remind us just how far weve come. The media will close-up
the present as they trumpet closure of the past. You can bet on that if
I get shot by the police.

There will be no justice if I get shot by the police. My shooter will
get paid administrative leave. Theyll rush before a conduct committee;
union-approved with citizens removed. If they are exonerated, no charges
will be filed. If they are reprimanded, no charges will be filed. If
they are white, race wont be a factor. If they arent white, the question
will be profane. Colleagues will give interviews, and be glad to have
the officer back in action. Their family will be made a highlight of
the difficult ordeal.

I will be silent; beyond the chamber of fiction. A
never-was-didnt-happen casserole in the atrophied kitchen of critical
vision. A raindrop in the flooding genetic memory of some chocolate
infant, unreal and unacknowledged in the tribulations of his tomorrow.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/95/95_guest_shot.html

http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2004/07/146789.php

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