Page 17 - Provoke Magazine Vol2

just because he said so. I calmly responded to him, “I under- stand that you are a vet and I discussed this with my grandpa who is also a vet. He says he fought for my right, not my sub- mission. I have every right to pray over myself and my peers to begin the day. I feel as if my actions are quite respectful and not disturbing to the class at all. I apologize if you feel differently about that, but I won’t apologize for not saluting the flag, and you can’t force me to perform the act.” It was the first of many times I would be marched to the office for going against the grain, but it was also the first time I remem- ber standing up for what I believed in and how I felt about cultural practices and winning the argument. So we are clear, I finished all four years of high school, every morning and before each game with my hands tucked behind my back and my head bowed in prayer, while everyone else saluted the flag.
AND TO THE REPUBLIC, for which me, my brothers and sisters, it does not stand. The world cringes at the idea of a respectful protest only when the protestor is of a brown skin tone. We glorify taking a knee for a fallen player out of respect and encouragement. We applaud as he is carried or helped off the court or field. These same people will scream until their eyes bleed that it doesn’t matter who is dying on the nightly news and for what reason. If it is a black person (code word: THUG), it doesn’t matter. Just shut up already. Cops kill all types of people, they say. It’s a shame that you seem to be unconcerned your alleged peace officers are the biggest organized gang in America and the people you elect to gov- ern are less in control than an overpacked and understaffed daycare, ages 0 – 6. Tamir Rice was a child, Trayvon Martin, a child. Both killed and there are people who justified this. We all know that the country would burn if this ever happened to a blonde hair blue eyed child, even once. This country is a madhouse of temper tantrums and tragic decisions, all made to appease one section and not the whole. How do we sleep at night in America? Drugs and lots of them, but guess who gets locked up the most because of said drugs?
INDIVISIBLE WITH LIBERTY & JUSTICE FOR ALL
lives matter. When we mourn in the streets, whether it be rage or otherwise, these are feelings that are incited due to how we are treated daily. What hopeful mother must ponder how difficult it will be for her son to grow up? Simply, grow up. A black woman. What woman must fall in love and hope that at no point will a traffic stop go wrong, and she returns home without her lover or worse; be expectant of his arrival and receive a phone call instead. Possibly see her lover’s face spread across the news before he is brutally killed on live TV and they loop it for weeks. Heaven forbid he has a mugshot from a 15-year-old misdemeanor. Slander campaigns run rampant for the same guy who lifted himself up by the boot- straps, but it mattered a damn because his skin was black.
The woman I would become (AP) felt that pain at a DNA level as a freshman in high school. The freshman in high school remembered the 6-year-old child who almost peed in her pants because 4 cop cars dramatically filled her front yard and one pulled his firearm on the man who was grill- ing for his family. Screamed for him to drop the weapon, a two-pronged fork for meat, or he would shoot. All because the neighbor’s dogs continuously pulled our trash across the neighborhood and the man of the house addressed his concerns about the dogs. But you know, the big black guy with a family should shut up and do what he is told, right? Have his wife and children clean up after the dogs so he doesn’t run the risk of being shot. Tell me white America, how do you push those memories away? How do you trust an organization that has no discipline and isn’t medically trained to offer help as a man lays dying in his own blood and they draw a gun to forcefully remove someone as he begs God not to take his oldest brother from him? Let me know how you suppress those emotions that boil up every new year. Every anniversary asking yourself, how could that have gone differently? You tell me how you forget the time you raced to ensure your own sibling was safe and a cop puts a gun right to your face when you hadn’t even so much as raised your voice. Untrained and problematic. I can only say confidently that I know one cop who was not this way. I also know this cop has been suspended several times for, you guessed it, doing the morally correct thing, and not the decision that would carry on the façade that is our justice system. The system that millions of Americans swear by and salute every morning.
I raise my fist to you, America. I raise a fist in opposition to your blind truths in justice. Your lackadaisical approach to reform and your lackluster reasons for war. I do not salute your flag. I will not pledge my allegiance to your murderous rampages and trivial excuses for such. I stand in the same opposition you have given me and those who look like me since the day we took our first breath. I defy your allegiance and I stand in my principles. Those and only those will I cover my heart for, sing for and die for.
SALUTE!
on of Allegiance
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