By DeRay Mckesson, Brittany Packnett, and Johnetta Elzie, Huffington Post, November 11, 2014.
Originally published October 17:
In Ferguson, police met our protesting of police brutality with the disgusting irony of greater brutality, the likes of which Americans have rarely seen on our own soil. In this American town, officers tapped their batons, pointed guns in our faces, kneed our women’s heads, threw our pregnant mothers to the ground, jailed our peaceful clergy and academics, and tear gassed our children.
We are living an American Horror Story.
But it is significantly past time for the story to end. Never to be told again.
The onus to close this book falls directly on our leadership. Our elected leaders bear direct responsibility to ensure the safety of every one of its citizens at the hands of its agents, and to capture justice for every life taken. In this, the land of the free, you are responsible for securing and preserving that freedom for all of your citizens, irrespective of — or perhaps, especially because of — our skin. In a story in which we have been overwhelmingly targeted, unduly struck down by threat of our blackness, we require explicit attention, protection and value. We require freedom, and will hold everyone accountable to preserving our inalienable right.
