Heroes Slain. Remember. Lament. (Calvin Munerlyn, Breonna Taylor)

I’m in a pool of my own blood,

By the hands of some dudes

I would have shown love

Thi’sl – “This Is Not The End ft. V.Rose”

Christian Hip-hop artist Thi’sl’s 2019 album Small Thing To A Giant (STTAG) was released one year and one month after the St. Louis rapper was shot in an attempted armed robbery. Tuesday, September 25, 2018 around 12:30 am, Thi’sl took a bullet to the leg in an exchange of gunfire near Washington and Fifth Ave in his hometown.

The album walks listeners through the physical and emotional toll the experience had on the CHH veteran, as well as how it inspired him to keep pressing forward. Thi’sl’s was part of a ministry focused on pulling people like that gunman out of a lifestyle of violence and illegality that he himself once lived.

STTAG highlights the brokenness of a world that may bring violence upon those working to truly serve and protect a community.

After finding Christ, Thi’sl’s life changed. He entered into the struggle of trying to help those in broken systems of identity and purpose find a new way and new opportunities. (You can listen to some of Thi’sl’s story in this Rapzilla interview.)

Thi’sl survived his encounter with violence in 2018.

Calvin Munerlyn and Breonna Taylor, serving on the frontline in the 2020 Covid-19 world, did not.

As we continue longing for the Kingdom, and loving the King, we acknowledge living in the already and the not yet. We cry out for His Kingdom come and Will be done, even as Home feels far away. I wanted to take a moment to remember the stories of Calvin Munerlyn and Breonna Taylor, and lament.

Last month I concluded Laments in Midlothian, mourning the killing of Jemel Roberson, a security guard slain after subduing an active shooter where he worked in Robbins, a suburb outside of Chicago.

Calvin Munerlyn, a security guard at a Family Dollar on E. Fifth Avenue in Flint, Michigan, was shot while enforcing a policy meant to protect the community from the spread of coronavirus.

Munerlyn, the 43-year old husband and father, told Sharmel Teague’s adult daughter that she needed a mask to be in the store where he worked. She complied and left, but Sharmel got into an argument with Munerlyn. He told her to leave the store and the cashier not to serve her, according to David Leyton, Genesee County Prosecutor.

20 minutes later Sharmel’s husband and adult son arrive. After a brief verbal exchange with Munerlyn, the son, 23 years of age, shoots him in the head.

Lament.

In Louisville, Kentucky, Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker were in her apartment in the early morning of Friday, March 13. Around 12:40 a.m. police officers were battering-ramming their way in.

The officers were serving a no-knock drug warrant related to an individual in their custody. After reportedly calling 911 to report the in-progress home invasion, Walker, a licensed gun owner, took a shot at the people breaking and entering.

The officers fired at least 20 times into the home, hitting Breonna at least eight times, killing her.

Lament.

The 26 year old EMT was planning to go back to school to become a nurse when she was killed. She was planning to step into an even higher echelon of what society is considering a new hero class for this pandemic world.

The situation has disturbing parallels to tragic violence by police in no-knocks like this.

“In recent years, dozens of people have been killed by police in the course of these raids, including elderly grandparents and those who are completely innocent of any crime.” Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (pg. 75 “The Lockdown – Waging War”)

Alberta Spruill was killed on May 16, 2003, seventeen years to the day of me typing this very sentence. It was during a no-knock drug related raid. The warrant was for an individual that “had been arrested four days before, but the officers didn’t check and didn’t even interview the building superintendent.” (Alexander, pg. 75).  The 57 year old Alberta went into cardiac arrest and died, likely because of the flashbang grenade that was deployed by police, on top of the trauma of home invasion. “The death was ruled a homicide but no one was indicted.” (Alexander, pg. 76).

The raid that killed Spruill happened in New York. Alexander notes that dozens of New Yorkers shared experiences of being terrorized by the police similarly. A number of the terrorized citizens were nurses.

(NewsOne covers 22 black women who died during their encounters with police here.)

Kenneth Walker, who fired at the home invaders, was arrested. Charges were brought against him, but not for drugs. It was because he took a shot at a specialy privileged class of plain clothes, unidentified breaking-and-enterers.

Walker was released to house arrest. An attorney for Walker is calling for the case against him to be dropped because of the incomplete and misleading testimony given by police to the grand jurors who indicted Walker. The police accounts did not match the accounts of neighbors. The police accounts seemed to be inaccurate. Something seems to be broken.

As more and more information from this tragic incident becomes public, pressure has been mounting for further investigation of the officers and the department as well.

Some departmental policies for this type of operation will supposedly be changed, but nothing can bring Breonna back.

For argument’s sake: A simplified (and purposefully focused) explanation of gun (handgun) and bullet.

The trigger is pulled. The hammer or striker, held tense by a certain amount of pressure, is released. When that tension is released the hammer or striker springs forward, and hits the primer at the rear of the bullet.

The bullet is packed with gunpowder, highly combustible. When that pressure is released after the trigger is pulled, pent up tension from the hammer or striker meets primer. A small explosion occurs. The gunpowder burns because of this explosion, converting to a rapidly expanding gas, trapped in a tiny, confined space. This creates even more intense pressure which is forced upon the bullet.

The bullet is driven by this pressure and tension down the barrel. This system has been designed to force all of that pressure and tension and heat forward. Once that trigger is pulled there is only one way out. Whatever happens to be in front of it will be impacted.

Tension, pressure, explosion, damage. Violence.

Thi’sl was shot by the very kind of person he was ministering to. Calvin Munerlyn was killed by the very people he was working to protect. Breonna Taylor was killed by individuals who were supposed to be her allies during this pandemic.

Pressure, tension, and violence occurred. These incidents were results of systems of skewed identity and purpose. Sometimes those fighting to help others threatened by those systems have violence brought against them.

Sometimes this inspires others to fight to try and dismantle those systems. But theirs is a long, hard, uphill battle. And many fall in the struggle. There are so many comorbid, pre-existing conditions.

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I am not a big gun fan (anymore), but I felt that sharing some of Thi’sl’s story was worth it. When doing some research for this post I happened upon this commentary by Colin Noir related to Breonna Taylor and Kenneth Walker. I don’t endorse his views, but I appreciated his perspective.

I watched a few documentaries about gun violence to find some possible directions for this post. One I highly recommend for a Christ-centered perspective would be Beating Guns. I hope to visit its content in a post one day. You can see a trailer here and find more information at their website here.

I also watched The Gun Store and All In America: Chicago with Chris Hayes from MSNBC which is not a documentary but has some pretty interesting commentary. If the topic interests you they are both worth a view in my opinion.

I recognize I didn’t say much about the killer of Calvin Munerlyn. Maybe not as equal opportunity as I ought to be, but I think part of the system that Ramonyea Bishop is trapped in has a lot to do with something in the Flint water and Nature 82. And culture. Bizzle goes in on that on many tracks. Let me highlight CHI-RAQ this time. This combo is something I hope to return to again.

I feel one more time that I have to plug Andy Mineo’s – “Death Has Died” and Propaganda’s “Warm Words”. Jackie Hill Perry’s “Maranatha” is appropriate for this post as well.

V.Rose’s feature on “This Is Not The End” is so necessary. The Gospel message, that it is Christ’s blood paid to cover our sin, and Christ’s love interceding for us that makes knowing God (eternal life) available to us (now and forever) really needs to be renewed in our minds, especially when the Kingdom feels far away.

While we feel pain in the not yet, remembering the already helps us stand in prayer and struggle against the brokenness affecting the least of these, and those that would work to protect them, even as those deemed heroic in the struggle may fall.

The Bail Project – Freedom should free