I'm still crying for Tamir Rice.
[ I started writing this post three weeks ago on June 22nd. At the time, I didn’t know that I was three days away from what would have been Tamir Rice’s 18th birthday. Once the realization hit me, I stopped writing. I had to sit on this for a few weeks before I could muster up the strength to come back to it. I am excited, excited feels like the wrong word but it’s how I feel, to share this with you. I haven’t written in months. It’s feels right to break my hiatus on a topic that I’m devoting my life to. Black Lives Matter. I look forward to reading your thoughts and responses. Stay well friends. ]
My world was not radically changed when George Floyd passed away. His murder, brutal, public, dehumanizing; wasn’t a catalyst for me to participate in social justice initiatives. It didn’t open my eyes to the hidden realities of our society. It did not cause me to evaluate the words that I use, the company that I keep or the systems of oppression that infect our society.
My world changed on November, 22, 2014 when Tamir Rice was murdered by a police officer while playing in a park. I was 24 at the time and was working abroad for a global education program. I cannot recall the city or even the country that I was in. What I remember are the emotions that I felt. Emotion that still feels fresh. Emotions living under the surface waiting to bubble over seemingly renewed each morning. I remember the bile in the back of my throat and my knees getting weak. I remember feeling dizzy. I remember feeling alone. I remember not talking about it or writing in my journal about it and yet still thinking about it every day for months.
I think about Tamir Rice often. The other day I was having a water gun fight with my nephew JJ in our neighborhood. Patrick suggested we go for a walk and JJ was running ahead of us shooting us and every bush and every tree he passed with water and laughing so hard. He had so much joy on his face and it was so contagious and beautiful that it made me want to cry. Then I thought of Tamir Rice.
I thought of the cop cars that drive through our neighborhood often, using it as an access road to the other part of town. I pictured a cop car stopping and within two seconds, before I could explain that they were just toys my beautiful nephew being taken away from us. I wanted to tell him to stop running and that we needed to go home. To explain to him that it would be safer for him to play in the yard…but I didn’t. He should be allowed to play freely. I should be allowed to watch my nephew play freely without having to squash his 5-year-old joy with a conversation about racism and police brutality.
I just want my nephew to be able to play and I want to be able to play with him without thinking about him getting shot by a cop.
You think that this is just for George Floyd but I’m still crying for Tamir Rice. You think this is just about Ahmaud Arbery but we’re still grieving Emmett Till. You think this is just about justice for Breonna Taylor but we’re still fighting for Sandra Bland and the dignity and justice she deserved.
I still have lots to learn and so many books to read but in regards to being ‘woke’ or not, my eyes couldn’t be opened any wider. I’m awake and I’m never going back to sleep. Tamir Rice. I wish I didn’t know his name. I wish his name never ran across the bottom screen of the weekly news and was never printed in a newspaper. I wish he was alive. I wish after playing in the park, he went home with his sister. I wish after playing in the park with a TOY, that he was able to go have dinner with his family. He deserved that. He deserved life.
We are still crying tears for injustices of old. I haven’t even made room for the injustices of today. Black Lives Matter.
