#BlackLivesMatter

I've literally run out of fucking words.

I want to say something meaningful. I want to say something helpful. I want to say something. 

Anything at all. 

I have no fucking words. Just anger, and sadness, and exasperation at the fact that we apparently can't go a single fucking day without shooting a black person dead in the street. I don't care if he had a concealed weapon. I don't care if he had weed in his car, which in legal in some places by the way, so there's that. I don't care if he ends up having a rap sheet a mile long. He, and so many others, don't get to tell their side of the stories or even get the option of a fair, just trial, not that I really believe that is a thing. You know why? Because they're dead. At the hands of police officers. For being black. 

I mean, sure he probably (maybe?) wasn't like "oh, a black person, I think I'll go kill him" But how many black males get pulled over everyday for driving while black. A shit ton, that's how many.

Don't try to feed me your bullshit that it isn't about race. In 14 years of driving, I've never once even been pulled over. One of my cars currently has expired plates. Never been pulled over. 

Let that sink in. 

So maybe I have some words. But none of them are good. I never know all the facts in these stories. I don't want to offend people (and by people of course, I mean my black friends) or say the wrong thing and come off high and mighty in my comfy white world so I keep my mouth shut. I fill with anger and hate that I'm not entitled to and I stay quiet, but I'm tired of being silent. I am tired of the excuses and the skewed perspective and the "well he shouldn't have..." justification bullshit. I'm tired. And if I'M tired, I can only pretend to imagine what the black community is. 

I am appalled and ashamed and horrified at what we, as people, have become, or rather at what we have persisted to be. In 1963, MLK said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. That whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Anyone who lives here in the country cannot be considered an outsider inside it's boundaries. Now days we teach that letter from Birmingham jail and it's considered our history, but is it really? Injustice is still injustice no matter how you paint it.

We are all a part of the history that is being written as I type. You don't get to pretend this shit isn't still real. That it isn't happening daily because you choose not to notice. It's out of hand and unless we stop looking the other way it is never, ever going to stop. Thoughts and prayers are fine. I'm down with that too. But maybe, just maybe, it's time to get off our asses and actually do something. So you can turn and look away or you can stand up and shout. You know my ass can be loud.