The Bell Verdict: Here We Go Again

In a single day I assembled a several pieces to solve a puzzle that began in my head more than a year ago. Year another door I passed through, another crossroads where I was forced to make a choice has collapsed in the rearview mirror I don't use anymore, a something I was holding onto blindly in the name of it being the only remnant of a life that is now completely and absolutely over. Now I know it's as dead as hip-hop. And that's a good thing in the long run.

Then the Bell Verdict came in. In this town I'm not surprised when cops get off for doing dirt. Every officer charged in the case of the husband-to-be who the cops gunned down while firing 50 times in yet another "He's got a gun!" bullshit story, have walked. Like my own realization, I think folks in this town were sitting around telling themselves that it was going to be another way. But once you learn the cycles here, you pretty much know what to expect from everybody.

The New York City Justice system can get away with committing these crimes against minority communities because the people upstairs in this town know that Blacks and Hispanics here rarely head to the polls when it counts. And those of us who do don't always follow the candidate to judicial offices or make any attempts to rally what power structure we do have to do more than just get Sharpton on camera to talk about how fucked up it all is. We tsk tsk to ourselves on our way to work, feeling like it has nothing to do with us, that it's just another example of how our voices just don't matter within the cacaphony of the American machine. We will cry and be outraged about this. But like goldfish, we'll manage to forget it in a moment's notice.

I'm from a place where the first set of cops to do something like this would've caught a case so vicious that they might as well have had their heads put on pikes in front of the royal palace. But here, folks just take it, add some catchy slogan or picture to their myspace profile and call it a day until the next town meeting or save black people seminar or debate on the Tavis Smiley show. And y'all think that Obama is gonna save you?

I wasn't here for Yusef Hawkins, the first Howard Beach, or Tawana Brawley. But I was here for Diallo and Louima and now for Bell. Unlike Jena no ones going to rush in to save us, except us. But that's a lesson the majority of Negroes won't figure out until we're all living in the new project on floating domiciles in the Long Island Sound. It's the same song and there's no young Tupac to come out of nowhere and dazzle us with magic words. It makes me want to leave this place for good. But that's probably going to happen one way or the other. Out.