Pentecost Sunday during #CoronaVirus
My otherwise unhealthy outdoors, literally from the invisible Coronavirus, now with 6, 129, 740 new cases and 370, 854 deaths in 188 countries. In the US, 1, 780, 897 new cases and 104, 115 deaths since Jan. 22, 2020. Today marks 85 days of #socialdistancing for me. In California, there are 110,039 cases and 4, 146 deaths while NY has 370, 770 cases and 29, 784 deaths. Staying home, wearing masks and social distancing have saved lives.
Until George Floyd’s life was taken by Minneapolis’ policemen. Folks in two days had protested and yesterday, the peaceful protests went on for five hours but turned ugly towards the end. Supposedly agent provocateurs catalyzed the looting, destruction of retail stores, vandalism and others blindly followed leading to the burning of three police cars, a bus, with helicopters flying until 1 am in our neighborhood near the Grove.
I’m absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt. And I feel that we must always work with an effective, powerful weapon and method that brings about tangible results. But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.
Martin Luther King, Jr. “The Other America” (1968)
Indoors, today, I choose to be healthy. I say thanks first to my hubby’s freshly prepared orange juice, from oranges sweetly delivered to us, courtesy of a very good friend who braved the streets yesterday to travel from Eagle Rock to where we live. Thank you Nonoy Alsaybar! A young Filipina woman braved the freeways yesterday to deliver @lennysweets of 2 boxes, 24 pieces of #ubepandesalwithcheese – down to 2 now, as 12 were given to my #princess2015la; these were solicited, paid orders to help a #smallbusiness. Then, another warmhearted good friend delivered #ubehalya to our doorsteps, a beautiful gesture from his mother’s heart, thank you so much Amelia Sebastian and Joel Vera Sebastian!
Three beautiful spirits of three Filipinos warm my heart this am, actually five, and their brave loving gestures that I store in my heart while reading the aftermath of May 30, 2020 riots erupting over the flagrant, cold-blooded murder of George Floyd, by a blue uniformed policeman pressing his knee down on George’s neck for 8 1/2 minutes, while 3 other policemen watched. Longer than cooking a ramen egg for 6 minutes, choking out the breath in this man, a beautiful gentle soul so loved by his community and family for how he helped them and sang to them. Washington Post tweeted this: “It wasn’t the windpipe. It was the compression of the carotid and the vagus nerves for 9 minutes by police that caused his heart to stop along with the other 2 officers on his back compressing his chest and ribs while the 4th stood guard. It was a planned and controlled murder.”-Ginny https://t.co/qAIqY05MMh
On April 29, 1992, our neighborhood was surrounded by fires in the north, east and south when the Black – Korean conflicts erupted in Los Angeles and got more on fire after the policemen beating Rodney King to a pulp were found not guilty. Until a civil trial found these rogue thugs of policemen culpable and the city had to pay millions in civil penalties to Rodney King. The civil trial was headed by an adept mediator, Ester Soriano Hewitt, who was its civil jury foreperson. How do I know? She then talked to a number of press folks and I became her Girl Friday, ushering press folks to talk to her in my backyard. We have learned multiculturalism in our communities, but our rogue police forces have yet to internalize that we are #nothuntedprey but citizens to be protected and served. The biggest looters of our national treasury are in the Republican tenant in the White House, his own businesses, his friends’ businesses, in the Republican members of the Senate, in the Sec. of Treasury Mnuchin who parceled out taxpayers’ hard earned dollars to big businesses, big hotels, big restaurants, actions that continue to prey on our psyches and national harmony as blatant injustices.
Racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible — even if you’re choking on it — until you let the sun in. Then you see it’s everywhere. As long as we keep shining that light, we have a chance of cleaning it wherever it lands. But we have to stay vigilant, because it’s always still in the air.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
#weareonehumanity#inthistogether#georgefloydwehonoryou#notoroguepoliceofficers who #actlikethugs#yestopolicereform#notochokeholds#notoexcessiveforce