|
On Sunday, Aug. 23, Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back by Kenosha, Wis., police in broad daylight in front of his three sons, ages 3, 5, and 8. The bullets damaged Blake’s spinal cord and left him paralyzed. His brutal shooting has not only left his body broken, but it has also affected the psyche of his young children — another generation gripped by fear of police.
A year ago, nearly one year to the day, Aurora, Colo., police confronted Elijah McClain after someone reported him as a “suspicious person” while he was walking home. He was unarmed and had done nothing illegal, but officers used excessive force, placing him in a chokehold. Paramedics injected him with ketamine, and he suffered cardiac arrest. McClain died on Aug. 30, 2019. Officers still have not been held accountable.
Also on Aug. 24, though several decades earlier, 14-year-old Emmett Till was falsely accused of offending a white woman — an accusation that two white men used as reason to torture and murder him. Those men were acquitted and never held accountable.
We are entering a moment in our nation of overlapping grim milestones.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE
|
