We’ve been singing this song for far too long. This video was posted with a young version of myself & Louis (age 11) in Dec of 2014 & the story remains the same. We may be exhausted but we ain’t gonna stop!!
“Calling out the violence of the racist police. We ain’t gonna stop till people are free.”
When Power is Invisible Racism Thrives. Call out white supremacy in whatever way you know & teach your children the same.
Today my 17 year old son is a senior at an historically Black High School, Hillside High School, in Durham NC & is taking African-American History. The day after the Kentucky Attorney General stated a grand jury failed to indict the officers who took the life of Breonna Taylor, Louis is learning about Qualified Immunity.
He is learning about the racist structures and policies that continue to exist in our 21st Century American legal system that enables law enforcement to have no culpability when unjustly taking the lives of people in this country.
Qualified Immunity is a legal principle created through Court opinions. It is not based on actual federal law but rather the Court’s interpretation of laws & policies. Qualified Immunity can be repealed through state & federal legislation. This is just one state/national reform that MUST be passed into law in order to hold individual law enforcement to the same standard that civilians are held to when causing the death of another.
“Qualified immunity applies only in civil lawsuits, not criminal prosecutions. Yet such civil suits are the only means by which individuals or families can get compensation for the violation of their constitutional or civil rights. And in practice, civil lawsuits are often the only means to seek justice at all because prosecutors—themselves government officials—are typically reluctant to bring criminal charges against their government colleagues, especially police officers who are crucial to the work prosecutors do on a daily basis.”
https://ij.org/frequently-asked-questions-about-ending-qualified-immunity/