Let's Catch Some Waves

You know what I'm tired of hearing about?

Ferguson.

I hope that Ferguson never falls out of the public eye.

Those sound pretty contradictory William.

They aren't and let me explain before you explode one way or the other.

I'm tired of hearing about Ferguson because every article I read, every post someone makes, I can't fathom the fact that there are still people out there who don't get it. As someone who readily acknowledges I have too much faith in humanity, it hurts my soul when I read completely honest responses from people who downplay the race situation here.

Now, I'm not African American. I'm Hispanic. Sorta. I'm technically white. Being half and half makes things weird. I grew up with a white version of the world. My culture is American, and I don't even know Spanish. My skin color says something entirely different. I learned at a young age that I needed to be extra careful of what I did in public so as to not be perceived as a criminal. This was around the same time I told myself I could never be an actor as there weren't any respectable roles for darker skinned people.

I don't know if I was explicitly told these things, but I know people who are African American and grew up being told EXPLICITLY that they needed to go out of their way to avoid being even suspected, and if they were then they had to be the absolute definition of compliant in order to get off as best as they could.

Today, parents can't even tell their young kids to surrender to the cops, because, let's be honest here, that's officially a LIE. Don't know if I can say that any more bluntly.

I've read a lot of articles recently, and I had one that made me want to yell at my friends who shared it. The title read "7 tips to keep from being shot by a cop." (Hardest thing to find, geeze!)

The tips are as follows:

1. Don’t be in a gang.

2. Don’t rob convenience stores.

3. Don’t do or sell drugs.

4. Don’t loiter on street corners or walk down the middle of the street.

5. Don’t carouse at night.

6. If you are stopped by a police officer, comply with his or her orders. If you don’t like what they are doing, record the incident and hire an attorney.

7. Do not, under any circumstances, attack the officer, hit the officer, or try to take the officer’s gun away from the officer.

(Source: http://buzzpo.com/7-tips-to-keep-from-being-shot-by-a-cop/)

Now, I agree, these are nice guidelines

BUT

COPS SHOULD NOT SHOOT SOMEONE FOR LOITERING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET!! OR CAROUSING AT NIGHT!! OR EVEN ROBBING A FREAKING CONVENIENCE STORE!!

Like, how does someone stealing something give you the right to kill them? We have a whole justice system in place to punish these sorts of things. Taking someone's life for that, well there's a special place in hell for people like you. That's super mean, but I need you to understand that I'm the variety of human that actually values human life. ALL HUMAN LIFE. And even as I wrote that bit about the special place in hell, I immediately thought, well unless you repent and accept Jesus as your savior, and mean it in your heart, but that's a different blog post.

Ferguson has created a series of waves. People are having their eyes opened to the injustices that exist in our back yard. I want this to become a Tsunami. I want there to be destruction in it's path. Not like, riot destruction, mind you, but more a change to our systems, to our mindsets.

Much like my belief that there shouldn't be a "tenure" system for teachers, I don't think cops should have a free pass. I think we need to be just as strict, if not more so on the people who take an oath to protect us.

This spills over to any person who has any sort of authority, not just cops. I think everyone in authoritative positions needs to reevaluate themselves and their systems. I want to see weeds being pulled in all levels of government. I want people who constantly state, "There's no racial issue in Ferguson" to be knocked down a peg until they realize and accept it.

In the past week or so, I have read more stories about how a similar crime landed a person of color a much more intense sentence than a white person that it makes me sick to think I used to idolize this country.

The USA, post slavery and civil rights, is still really young. That doesn't excuse us from being blind to the errors in the system. In terms of code, a Developer who knows an error exists but decides to just pretend it isn't there will eventually encounter that issue. They can pretend it doesn't exist by dressing it up, but it's still there, and one day it'll become the vulnerability that a hacker uses to bring the whole thing down.

This error is out on the open. Everyone can see the line of code that's wrong. You've got a lot of people who want to fix the code, but there's still a large number of people claiming it's not an error and everyone else is throwing it in the wrong light.

I'm not in Ferguson. I don't have first hand accounts. So, here's my contribution. If you for whatever reason think that the cops are in the right, or the situation is being overplayed I ask that you tell me. Message me, comment, whatever. I want to talk with you. Why does it seem that way to you? We can figure this out together.

I'm planning a trip to France, and I was informed by my father to be careful, because I could be perceived as "terrorist-like" due to my having brown skin. There's nothing I want more than for this to not be an issue. Ever.

Let's help these waves grow. Let this be the start of some major, essential, changes in our world and society.

Love you all, and hope that in whatever way possible this can help.