South Central Los Angeles:
Interview about April 14: "I'm standing by it 100 percent—this needs to stop"
April 12, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader: This is an interview I did at Florence and Broadway in South Central LA with a young Black woman.
Q: We’re out here on Florence and Broadway, talking about the movement and the demonstrations on Tuesday; what do you think?
A: I think that I’m standing by it 100 percent. This needs to stop. It’s been going on for too long, as you said. I’m a Black mother myself growing up out here, and I know the pain and the suffering my Black people go through, and the police try to put fear in us, and I don’t understand why; we don’t deserve this. All of us come out, we all different people; we come from different places, that doesn’t mean we all have to be dead because of one person’s behavior.
We don’t have to be sittin in jail because of one mistake we make, that messes up our whole life, because there’s something you did as a child or something, holding it all against him. Black boys growing up, killing them, not even letting them have a future. They’re young, they didn’t even get the experience, to go through changes, they killed them; they’re still learning, even at 18, 19 they still don’t know, they still need that guidance, and help, and I feel like the police instead of trying to kill them they should help them and try to influence them to get back on the right track, instead of trying to hurt their pride, and make them feel less of a man than what they are.
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And it hurts. I cry, because I don’t want my son to come home to me and let me know the police pulled him over because he’s Black and they feel like he’s in a gang, and in reality he’s not, because he rose up from a good family; because we Black don’t mean we don’t have good Black people out here when we do. I’m sorry unfortunately some of them make mistakes, they don’t think before they react, but not all of them does that.
And even if they did they shouldn’t be killed for it; at all; no one – Black, white, Hispanic, or anything, no one deserves to die because of a petty mistake that they made. They probably wasn’t thinking at the time; you never know. That person at the end of the day they coulda helped you in life. You probably needed them. And you’ll never know because you killed them.
Q: They’re targeting Black and Latino people. Why are they doing that?
A: If I could tell you I would tell you. I just wish they could make them stop. It’s not worth it. Everybody got family members. Now these kids are going to grow up fatherless, because you just killed their father and that’s just grow them up to have corrupted mind because you started it from the beginning. You just killed his father, so now his son is messed up, because he don’t have a dad no more, because you done killed his dad.
…I observe and I see, and I see how mean they are. I’m scared of them myself and I admit that, I am. I know that they capable of killing people and I don’t want to die, so what I’m gonna do, when they come around I’m not saying nothing, I’m not about to argue with them, I’m not gonna give them the power. So I’m gonna just be quiet.
Find out more and get involvedQ: What do you think about call for shutting down the country on Tuesday, April 14?
A: That’s very important. They need to know, they need to hear us. We’re not playing. This has gone on for too long, and they got away with it long enough. Now it’s 2015. How long; how much longer?
Q: What do you think you can do to build for it?
A: I’m gonna get the word out; get it on Facebook; I try to get it around as much as I can especially to my fans, because we all Black and I socialize with my Black friends and I’ll let them all know. And my baby daddy is a male Black guy and I let him know all the time, cause he gets frustrated with the cops. And I let him know like don’t give them the power cause that’s what they want, they want you to do that, so then that gives them the right to say, “Oh, cause he started going off, that’s why I killed him.” No. Don’t give them that power. Don’t say nothing. They can’t argue back when nobody not saying nothing. But then again they may just kill you cause you not saying nothing.
Q: So we’re building a movement to put an end to this.
A: Yes. And I’m on top of that movement, right along with you guys.
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