A Rush to Judgement vs. The Rush To Shoot

( – promoted by lowkell)

I continue to be baffled by those (mostly “conservatives”) who keep wagging their fingers and warning us against any kind of “rush to judgement.” What about a rush to shoot?

Your government rushed to use chemical agents, rubber bullets, and technology designed for waging war on foreign enemies- all against peaceful citizen protestors. Tear gas and bullets were not used during the looting, but against peaceful protestors in their own neighborhood.

You go on and on about an oppressive big government violating your freedoms- but when armed agents of the state violate the freedoms of poor black people, you wag your finger and tell us not to “rush to judgement.”

You look the other way when it happens in a poor black neighborhood because you’re thinking to yourself well, that’s a dangerous place full of thugs so they probably deserve it, those people have to know their place.

Here’s the point: those are RIGHTS that are being violated, rights that are no less sacred when held by poor people or held by men and women of color.

You allow armed agents of state power to form a domestic army that violates the rights of human beings in an impoverished neighborhood, then I can absolutely and without qualification promise that they’re coming to your neighborhood next. It’s not a matter of if, but when.

Today it’s the parking lot of a convenience store on West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson, Missouri. Tomorrow it’s the parking lot of a grocery store at Barracks Road Shopping Center in Charlottesville, Virginia.  

Those are not just the rights of poor people of color that are being abused by government power in places like Ferguson. Those are MY rights. Those are YOUR rights.

When you look the other way as the liberty of a human being is violated in a neighborhood you don’t really care about- for whatever personal or political biases you may have- you have chosen to make your own children less free.

This is not about Right vs. Left. This is not about Republican vs Democrat. This is about liberty.

Best-selling author and historian Coy Barefoot is the host of Inside Charlottesville.