BART Shooting: NEVER AGAIN

Monday, January 12, 2009
By VeTalle Fusilier

What a way to being the new year.  Our age old dance with police and violence is making news again.  Another young black man gone.  This time, Oscar Grant III and his buddies seemed to consider their behavior and possible consequences, they took public transportation, so as not to drive impaired in the dangerous streets.  Who knew the subway tracks could be as dangerous?

And so something happened to have police break up a fight. And we don’t know the circumstances leading to young men being held in handcuffs, but we do know that image, that feeling.  Or maybe those of us who have ever seen a loved one or ourselves in handcuffs know that feeling.  In my neighborhood, we knew about the DC and the PG county police.  The older teens would tell stories of how the cops would pick you up, cuff you, get out of the car and leave the door unlocked so you could get out of the cruiser and run, and then catch you and beat you down.  So, all those cops and cuffs evoke those feelings again.    The feeling of literally being vulnerable.  And in this case that vulnerability was to be shepherded by law enforcement officers, not abused to the end of a life.  And commissions, and change, and yadda yadda yadda, still leaves us African Americans with never dissipating connections to brutality, discrimination and less than… because of our color.

BART other angle

So some white man’s admonition is to “ put the puzzle together”?  Not a puzzle for us.  Not a game.  Just another act that makes no sense.  There are a lot of questions to be answered in a legal setting that I won’t offer opinions about.  But the impact on people, the Grant family and their loss, the officer and his family moving to escape death threats are the inescapable conclusions of action, the cause of which we can only imagine, bad or mistaken.

Family

BART’s African American spokesperson displayed a professional sensibility in his response that seemed measured, sympathetic to the family in its time of loss.  But in no way does one black face decrease the gut churning that is probably carried in African American DNA.  Just too much other stuff, too frequent acquaintance with crying parents, too many fathers gone from police gunshots. Police efforts to confiscate cell phone video footage again reminds us too much of cover up. Ten years since Amadou Diallo was brutally gunned down by police in New York City, and the shooters’ acquittal. Rodney King.  It all flows like blood from so many psychic gashes and what do we get?  Frustration and violence in the streets.

News report of protest

Brand new police cruiser?  You can almost feel Oakland’s anger when all the white face in uniform is lamenting is the loss of his vehicle.  Insensitive? Maybe, more like a real time view of the mindset that has so many in yet another reminiscent behavior: rage.  And the mayor, former Congressman Ron Dellums, himself arrested for opposing US support of apartheid, was not able to quell the frustration felt by the men and women who interact daily with others, but not him.   Others who enforce the notion of vulnerability, and who leave elected officials distanced, although perhaps as a result of not touching their own constituency.

On the scene

What must be noted are the Martin-esque comments of our young brothers in response to this.  If there is to be some lining, way less than silver, but lining none-the-less, it is the encouragement to be taken from the frustrated, but expressive young black men who demand to be treated as citizens, and their expressed hope for fairness for EVERYONE in Oakland.  And they say our youth are ignorant.  They sound pretty learned to me.

And just in case anyone would think this is a pity party invitation created out of an isolated incident, the home of the presidential inaugural, the nation’s capitol has its own drama, it’s own 2009 police, young black man story.

WJLA police arrest 

Now, we have Oscar’s mother pleading with everyone to end the property destruction and violence in the streets, the Chief of Police doing his diligence to determine if and what charges should be made against the officer and his behavior.  There is a $25 million lawsuit, just symbolic grandeur to exact some measure of recompense for a priceless loss.  In the end, none of it can give Oscar Grant’s daughter her Daddy back.  Or allow us a respite from our history, our tragic association with this type of violence:  too familiar, and too easily tearing the scab off an abrasion not healed by time, advancement, or change we can believe in. 

VeTalle Fusilier is a producer in Washington, D.C. It’s pronounced VEE-tal FEW-suh-leer.