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NEWS
“I saw three little black boys lying in the grave yard. I couldn’t tell if they were playing or practicing.”
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BRING BACK
OUR
GIRLS
Baba Lukata (poet), ‘Rehearsal’
MICHELLE OBAMA
“HANDS UP,
Chibok, Nigeria 219 girls still missing
DON’T SHOOT” MICHAEL BROWN
T
here is an unspoken rule that poetry should speak for itself, the way that a joke becomes less funny the more you explain it. However we believe that Lukata’s powerful poem not only needs scrutiny in light of the Michael Brown shooting, but is so pertinent to the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, which are continually being teargassed – yet again, the police throwing up fog to obscure the central issue here. Firstly, here are the facts. On August 9, 2014, Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18 yearold, outside of an apartment complex. Wilson fired six shots at Brown, two in the head, an autopsy has since revealed. The reasons for the shooting
the teenager, whose last words were “I don’t have a gun, stop shooting,” are still disputed. Eye witnesses say Wilson shot Brown after the teenager tried to run away, having been stopped and grabbed by the neck by the officer for jaywalking. When Brown turned around and raised his hands in the air, Wilson fired several shots and left his body in full view of the public for some time behind police tape. Meanwhile, Ferguson Police claim that Brown had robbed cigars at a convenience store prior to the shooting, however Police clarified that Wilson was not aware of the robbery allegations at the time of the initial stop. The shooting provoked volatile civil unrest as Ferguson residents took to
the streets to protest what many acutely believe as unfair treatment of the black community. Amidst that, there’s been media fury, a debate about the black community’s reaction, global condemnation of the US police department that has even seen Buddhist monks fly all the way from Tibet to US to support demonstrators’ “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” mantra. However, police have responded with a highly armed presence meant to contain demonstrators and prevent violence yet their disruption of the peaceful protests has caused the situation to unnecessarily escalate, the media and protesters complained. Two journalists were arrested and booked into prison without the police chief ’s knowledge, according to reports from The Washington Post.
It appears that what Lukata’s poem is speaking about is at the heart of the black community’s and global reaction to the shooting. He wonders whether the three black boys in the cemetery are playing or rehearsing their death by dint of their skin colour. Many black parents live in terror believing the fate of Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin or the many others who have been victims of racial profiling from the police and racist justice systems, will be the fate of their sons too. According to Darnell Hunt, UCLA professor and director of the Ralph J. Bunche Centre for African American Studies, Brown’s case isn’t new. read more on page 6
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