Chicago is lost. Where's the outrage? Where is the disgust? Since the 2015 Thanksgiving Eve release of the Laquan McDonald killing video and subsequent Black Friday protests (#LaquanMcDonald #BlackFriday #BlackChristmas) we have experienced an increase in the mayhem and madness of murders and attempted murders (shootings) - 700+ & 4000+ respectively. My wife and her friend were caught in the crossfire of an urban battle Saturday afternoon, November 26, 2016. Thankfully they were only bruised up from scrambling under her car in sheer fright to avoid being shot. A few days before an unarmed 19 year old black man named Kajuan Raye was shot in the back and killed by a Chicago police sergeant without even the exchange of gunfire. Illinois Congressman Danny Davis' grandson Jovan Wilson was murdered in his own house by two black teenagers. I can hear Marvin Gaye's dulcet tones in the ether crying out, "What's going on?"
'The Walking Dead'. One of the most popular TV shows worldwide broadcasts a gory, violent, cannibalistic vision of a zombie apocalypse. Wow! This show is not only a fictional imagining of the world's end but moreso a brilliant metaphor depicting human nature travailing against human extinction. Is this TV show emulating the travail of violence that's 'going on' in Chicago? Is all this violence the byproduct of our common human nature fighting against human extinction? Human extinction in Chicago?
Yes human extinction - human beings are being extinguished in Chicago especially black humans. If you are black and live outside the confines of mainstream America you by default experience what Martin Luther King called, "a gnawing sense of nobodyness." We are the historically devalued and disenfranchised.
This hyper-violence bleeds from what I would describe as an intentional,targeted 'Urban Darwinism'. The engineering of socio-economic necessity that demands the existence of an underclass as configured by a pigmentocracy.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a response to America's pigmentocracy. Black Life is a historically profound subset of all life. No victimology framework here, just facts.
I need as many of us as possible to become outraged, disgusted and ready to act. Remember the words of Dr. King, "If one is not free, all are not free." So how do we break the back of evil and governmental oppression? How do we liberate children, families, men & women generationally imprisoned and incarcerated? Our outrage and disgust must be converted into fair, rigorous and compassionate governance and community.
The apocalyptic violence of The Walking Dead de-classes humanity. No one is safe or immune from an inhuman existence/death. It's time for all of Chicago to wake up and shed our veneers of class, privilege and locative superiority (SouthSide, WestSide, NorthSide etc.). Chicago's illicit gun and drug flow are not by accident. Self-preservation is instincive so help yourself by helping other. Action plans forthcoming... @gslivingston GregoryLivingston.com #thevoiceofaction #gsl