Same Last Words, Same Pre-existing Conditions, and a Birthday (George Floyd, Eric Garner, Erica Garner)

Erica Garner’s birthday was May 29. She would have turned 30. In honor of her birthday, and her tireless striving for justice, I wanted to share this spoken word in its entirety, my thoughts on God’s heart as life ends. Weeping. Doubly so when life ends because of an abuse of power by those in authority.

The last words of Eric Garner, “I can’t breathe… I can’t breathe… I can’t breathe…”

The same final words shared by George Floyd. 6 years apart. The same fate.

The same pre-existing conditions.

The death of Eric Garner was something of a Rorschach test for many Americans. It’s been very much the same story since the infancy of America.

For the utility of socio-economic exploitation, blackness becomes the condemnation of blackness, becomes the justification of the taking of a black life.

The wound, to some, is always self-inflicted. If it seems clear that the officer, or random white person with the shotgun (or whoever really) has effectively killed [a black] someone, or initiated ultimately fatal cascading effects, well, don’t jump to any conclusions, “wait for the facts, like ‘I can’t believe my eyes’,” Derek Minor – “Free”.

Trust us… it’s the dead [black] person’s fault. “I will not rush to justice.” Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman.

There is always some underlying condition that the dead person is personally responsible for that can simply and cleanly be declared the prominent, and thusly only pertinent morbidity trumping any other co-.

“I bring up Trayvon,

You say he was a thug.

I bring up John Crawford,

You say he had a gun.

I bring up Eric Garner,

You say he was overweight.

And you say that Michael Brown

should have never tried to run.”

Bizzle – Unjust Scales 2: Hood Cries

Detractors of the value of black lives did the same with Erica Garner. There must have been personal responsibilities she failed at which would make her supremely and solely culpable for her own death.

And this personal responsibility would absolve the state from having to examine itself for any possible liability or needed changes.

Consider how we treat white mass shooters, the questions we ask when they kill? Such compassion and need for understating is extended to the killer.

A society that only treats the symptoms and never examines the systems that perpetuate persistent perilous outcomes is an ungodly one. A society that gives a bandaid for a gunshot wound, and continues to pay the shooters, and put the shooters on desk duty (with pay) if it’s bad press for them to be involved in the continued shootings for the time being, is an ungodly one.

There is rot in its roots that must be examined. The soil is toxic. Strange fruit is inevitable.

Those that turn away are accepting of its perpetuation. It is not their rights infringed upon.

Their rights are represented by the Boston Tea Party (destruction of property – 100 colonists causing approximately one million dollars worth of damages) and armed protests at statehouses… sometimes Confederate and Nazi paraphernalia can mysteriously be seen in the background, or on their signs.

These are the ones that help evil to prosper by doing nothing. Like the officers that stood guard and created a perimeter for Derek Chauvin to kill George Floyd. Are these apathetic ones then just good men doing nothing, or are they something else?

“If you don’t think
God care about oppression,

You ain’t study this book right”

Bizzle – “Equal Opportunity”

“And maybe the fake Pauls out here

Really Sauls.
Maybe it’s deeper than rap.”

Jered Sanders – “Equal Opportunity”

“Woe to those who call evil good

    and good evil,

who put darkness for light

    and light for darkness,

who put bitter for sweet

    and sweet for bitter.”

Isaiah 5:20

Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing

The pre-existing condition that took Eric Garner, and Philando Castile, and George Floyd, and Erica Garner and the grossly overrepresented percentage of African Americans who have contracted and died of Covid-19 and who have become slaves of the carceral state, the same pre-existing condition that was weaponized by Amy Cooper to threaten the life of Christian Cooper, was, and is the condemnation of blackness in a society steeped in white supremacy, and the extreme vulnerability that belongs to poor and low wealth communities in America.

And those comfortable with, and who enable its copulation and reproduction. 

And those who turn a blind eye. And circle the wagons, so the boot (or the knee) can be applied to the neck. And have more important talking points. And make their priorities known.

And have leader’s that encourage police brutality.

When I started doing research for the post for this week, George Floyd was still alive. The focus was a little different. But unfortunately still mostly consistent.

I came across the above video from the end of 2014. Samuel L Jackson, in the spirit of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, was putting another challenge on the virtual table.

He challenged celebs to record themselves singing the song “I Can’t Breathe”, then pass the challenge on. This video and song by Petty (explicit lyrics – not a Christian song, but appropriate I think) compares and contrasts priorities about as damndably as Be A King (@BerniceKing)’s tweet:

The takeaway: There are far too many, far too comfortable with so many [black] people dying. (Rev William J Barber, Repairers of the Breach. Rev Barber would likely add poor and low wealth people to those dying.)

This is an American legacy. An inheritance.

Like waste and pollution concentrated in poor and low wealth communities, leading to asthma and cancers and other vulnerabilities that threaten life.

Like the aftereffects of redlining, and a system where property taxes influence school investment, and concentrates poor and low wealth people together, so there are less resources for those children, less opportunities for those children. A cycle primed for repetition.

“I done saw three generations raised in the same apartment

And you cannot judge they choices they ain’t know that they had choices”

Corey Paul – “Gun Play”

“And lead in the water of poor,”

Derek Minor “Until I’m Gone” ft BJ The Chicago Kid

And increased likelihood of death or jail:

“It’s hell where I come from

or jail where I come from”

Corey Paul “Gun Play”

A history with

“…the Marine Corps landed them poor black men out in Berlin

And they couldn’t help but notice the striking resemblance

Between these Jewish ghettos and the one in they own Chicago

How a man ‘posed to gun tote for a country that don’t let him vote?

Or take down a dictator doing the same thing his own POTUS do?

That riddle alone

would ruin your psyche too”

Propaganda “It’s Not Working” 

Like prison labor before and during pandemic.  And prisoner firefighters.

And prison “manufactured” hand sanitizer, and prisoners “manufacturing”, who cannot actually have hand sanitizer themselves, because they are prisoners.

Thomas Paine’s, “As a man belongs to himself, so his labor when put in concrete forms belongs to him” gets qualified -or rather disqualified- by the 13th.

And charges pressed against a man who shoots at unidentified breaking and enterers because they are part of the venerated class and he is part of the condemned one (I wrote about this Veneration and Condemnation here).

And a disproportionate risk of maternal mortality. 

And a deficit of mental health resources and therapy. This deficit may lead to unhealthy lifestyle and adverse health risks.

“Rich man need a vacation, hop a plane

Broke man need a vacation, Mary Jane”

Lecrae – “Deja Vu” also experience Derek Minor’s “Black Market”

Eric Garner had been arrested at least 30 times before he died. There is a school to prison pipeline and a prison to prison cycle.

What if his first, and any subsequent arrests involved connecting Garner to a career counselor and a therapist? Or each arrest came with services to connect him to opportunities so he would not end up in the same place again?

Repeat offense is an indictment on the system.

What if the same people he had just stopped from fighting before his fatal encounter with police would have had that same level of investment?

Philando Castile was stopped by law enforcement 46 times, before he was killed. What if, instead of wealth extraction, those stops were used to better help the police understand the needs of the community and help Philando and the community move into a position to be more successful?

If Erica Garner doesn’t have to bury her father, having lost hope that she would even see justice, then maybe the added stress of serving in the struggle doesn’t break her down, making her more and more vulnerable to early death.

After Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, his heart was examined. It looked like the heart of a man decades older. Number eight on this list.

Bending that moral arc of the universe towards justice takes a toll. But he could not stop.

Like King, Erica Garner found the fight for justice to be essential work, even when she was told to slow down.

This same pre-existing condition causes many of our essential workers to make a choice between having food for their families, and risking death from coronavirus.

This pre-existing condition results in national leadership enacting an authorization to put workers back in meat processing plants (in some cases, prison labor), but not applying the same pressure into testing capabilities first.

What if our essentials were adorned with armor and honor like heroes of old (or our paramilitary police forces of today? – where your treasure is… there your heart can be seen), instead of being thrown back into what had already proven to be a deadly maw, like they were disposable?

The likelihood of a riot goes down to nearly zero if credit scores of residents are 700 or above according to John Hope Bryant of Operation Hope (I have not seen the numbers broken down to verify, but thought the sentiment worthy of inclusion. He speaks more about this here.)

But there are pre-existing conditions.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1803, February,

“we shall push our trading uses and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt,” (he was referring to Native Americans. This was part of his Indian Removal Policy). “We observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands.”

Indian Country Today – “Thomas Jefferson Architect of Indian Removal Policy”

I did not know Jefferson wrote that until this week. Intentional indebtedness for the purpose of control. This economic system is not working.

The foundations are broken.

Proverbs 22:7 has been weaponized and Exodus 22:25-27 has been forgotten.

What if the Bail Project was no longer needed? They long for their own obsolescence. But while it still is needed, what if everyone who could, added a little to their coffers for support?

If we did not suffer the pre-existing condition of unjust cash bail, Kalief Browder would likely still be alive.

The same would likely be true for his mother, Venida Browder.

A CNN anchor asked the question, like so many are asking now, “What does justice look like?”

We must fight and struggle for corrective justice for what has been done, but we must also constantly reintroduce the idea of Primary Justice into our culture. We must raise the bar from reactionary, to redress and prevention.

If the men responsible for the death of George Floyd are all charged, arrested, convicted, and sentenced, and those sentences are executed, we will say some justice has been done.

And George Floyd will still be dead. Others with the same pre-existing conditions will still be at risk.

True justice, primary justice, will be repair for systemic sins. It will look like examination, and treatment for past sins.

Primary justice will look like those who claim to follow Christ, pleading the case for the orphan and the widow and widower and the poor and dispossessed and misused and abused. It will look like those with power and connections and privilege entering into the plea of the most vulnerable.

Divine plea bargains of this kind will prevent diabolic, predatory ones.

Intercession. In prayer, policy, and person.

It will look like those people called by His name, humbling themselves, and praying and seeking and turning, and then Him hearing, and forgiving and healing the land (2 Chronicles 7:14).

And His people, doing so, not for the payout or the bailout or what they get from the redeeming work. It will be not-for-profit intercession.

It will be love, because of Love.

Because loved is the pre-existing condition for those who are in Christ. And we, in our love, long to look like Him, and put on His thoughts (Philippians 2:1-9).

It will look like beating guns, AR-15s being forged into plowshares for urban gardens in un-gentrified and un-gentrifiable communities.

And the other three officers stopping their partner from taking this man’s life, so that civilians would not have to beg the keepers of the law to stop their own from killing someone.

It would look like intercession.

It would look like Christ. It would look like rightstanding in relationship in society.

It would look like social justice.

And Erica would celebrate her 30th birthday with her father.

And one thing that Jefferson wrote, exposing the vulnerability and intended exploitation of the (intentionally) indebted poor, would be a lot less self-evident, and the other thing written, about all being created equal, and with certain inalienable rights would be a lot more self-evident in our society.

We’d have much better pre-existing conditions.

And I would write more about the Beauty of Beauty (Micah Bournes) and a lot less about lament.

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There were so many articles and interviews and discussions that I gleaned from this week that did not get a direct call-out above. This one went through many rewrites, and their content may not have been directly quoted or pulled from, but my thinking was impacted by each.

I had hoped to include them here this week, but I’ve already gone on far too long I think, and I’m against the clock.

I will try to post them at a later date.

And above all these put on love