For Anthony Hill, of DeKalb.
How do you fight, and serve, and give for a country who cares not about you.
For Tamir Rice, of Cleveland.
You were 12, shot dead in a park for holding a BB gun by men three times your age.
For Akai Gurley, of Brooklyn.
Who met death in a dark stairwell of a East New York project.
For Michael Brown, 18, of Ferguson, Missouri.
Said to have looked like a demon, left dead in the street for FOUR AND A HALF hours.
For Tyree Woodson, of Baltimore.
For Eric Garner, of New York.
I watched, with all of America, as they choked the life out of you.
I can't breathe anymore.
I am suffocating on the lists, on the names, on the lives of all my brothers and sisters.
For Victor White.
Who somehow "shot himself" while handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser.
For Yvette Smith, SISTER.
For McKenzie Cochran, BROTHER.
For Jordan Baker. For Andy Lopez, For Miriam Carey.
For Johnathan Ferell, For Larry Jackson, For Chavis Carter.
For Shantel Davis, Sharmel Edwards, Shereese Francis.
I am running out of lines, out of pages, in a book that seems to go on forever and ever.
Every 28 hours,
America kills my family.
How do I go on?
How do I walk out of my house every morning?
How do I breathe in a world like this?
Are we not worthy of a verdict, of justice, of life?
Am I too black to matter?
Is my own brother too dark to be human?
Will you refer to him as it, as thug, as gangster, as demon?
Will you continue to dishonor his skin and his name when he's gone?
It IS about race.
My father could be shot dead any day now.
But you'll NEVER understand.
'Cause you're not BLACK.
'Cause you aint Emmett Till's mother or Sean Bell's wife.
You don't quite get it...
What it's like to be sitting at the table wondering if your family is coming home tonight.
