Get down. Put your hands up. No, these ain’t the funk music or hiphop-show exhortations you know, these contradictory instructions were the last things Che Taylor heard before Seattle police killed him. Chief Kathleen O’Toole’s SPD moved extra quick to make sure that everyone knew he was a felon, thus even less deserving of breath than Black people are usually thought by them to be. There’s so much more to say about this, and so many more names to remember, and I’m so sorry, but I’m as tired as you are.
I pray his family gets the answers they deserve. I pray for the safety of all the least protected of us—from those institutionalized and robbed of rights, to Black women, to my Muslim brothers and sisters, to my LGBTQ and particularly my transgender folks fighting for basic needs, to the swelling numbers of people without a roof of their own, to those living with a disability, to the intersections of all these…