By Thomas Ellis II
I have noticed that since the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis, people all over are upset, angry, and mad. There have been several thousand people protesting in many cities during this coronavirus pandemic, chanting Black Lives Matter as a way to show their displeasure.
Now, weeks after all the protests and marches people are starting to paint Black Lives Matter in bright yellow paint on the streets. One of the sites where they painted this saying is right in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in Washington D.C. in front of the White House, and they changed the name of the street to Black Lives Matter Plaza.
In Newark, downtown on Halsey Street you can see the words in yellow saying Black Lives Matter. People are excited, and some are even proud of it. However, while they are so pumped about that, red blood is staining our streets across the country.
Let’s look at Newark. There have been several murders over the past few weeks. People have been shot all over the city, with the most recent being a male shot eight times in the 30s block of North 5th Street. When the police arrived, they found no victim, but a male entered University Hospital with multiple gunshot wounds.
Over the past few weeks, we have seen shots fired on Summer Avenue, a Newark man found after being shot in the North ward, shots fired on Parker Street, and a double homicide that took place on July 4th on Brookdale Avenue. This came hours after an Essex County Youth Correction Officer was shot and killed on Sandford and Lanark avenues. Smith Street at South Orange Avenue in the West Ward is still blocked off to traffic, because of an execution style shooting that took place weeks ago.
In Jersey City, a 17 year old was shot and killed this past Monday night, while three people injured in stabbing in Plainfield.
In just one weekend in Chicago, 102 people were shot, with a three year old among those suffering from gunshot wounds. In Atlanta, over the 4th of July weekend, an eight year old was shot and killed at a Wendy’s.
The family of the eight year old is devastated, and the Mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, held a press conference, saying, “Enough Is Enough. We have to stop killing our own people. It’s getting out of hand.”
In her plea to the community she told them, “This little girl was not shot by a police officer, but by a member or members of the community.”
As she deals with this, the mayor is also dealing with Georgia’s governor issuing a state of emergency over the violence in the city, as well as being diagnosed with COVID-19 along with her husband and at least one of her children.
While all these shootings and murders are going on in the black community, and the shooters or murderers in many cases are black, you don’t see Black Lives Matter protests or people showing up in these cities making demands or demanding answers. In the meantime, Red Blood is Staining our Streets.
You would think that with an uptick in violence in NYC, Baltimore, Atlanta, California, Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Washington D.C., Philly, and other cities where black people live, you would see Black Live Matter marches and protests all over; but that has not happened. You would think that with all the red blood staining the streets, Black Lives Matter would be hitting those streets.
It’s sad to think that groups, organization, churches, will only come out in large numbers to protest when a white cop kills a black man, but when a black man kills a black man, these groups are hard to find in your community. They are needed in many instances to comfort the families, to help the families, to help raise awareness or protect the community.
I can understand people standing up against police brutality, I have participated in hundreds of marches over my years, but what I don’t understand is how we can be so excited and fired up about the yellow paint on the street, but not angry, mad, and upset about the red blood staining our streets.
