Requiem For Alonzo The Human Toll of Police Brutality

[Music]

when the american dream

does right by the oppressed it is the

only time that it truly exists

the founding documents of this country

are fundamentally humanistic

racism is inhumane the dream and the

nightmare

cannot coexist and when they’ve tried

historically

black voices have issued the wake-up

calls the vice of bigotry

has weakened this country since the very

beginning and thomas jefferson knew this

he even suspected that it could one day

doom the very soul of this country

in fact jefferson feared that white

children witnessing their parents

beating their slaves

would erode the moral fiber of america

and warp the lens through which we view

human life if their life came in a

different color in his letter

notes on the state of virginia jefferson

writes if a parent can find no motive

either in their philanthropy or

self-love

for restraining the intemperance of

passion towards their slave

it should always be a sufficient one

that the child is present

now let’s be honest jefferson understood

this from first-hand experience

he then goes on to write i tremble for

this country

when i reflect that god is just and that

his justice cannot sleep forever

well 50 years after the civil rights

movement the cry for justice calls again

three simple words black lives

matter not matter more than any other

life

but matter at all the organization of

black lives matter is dwarfed in size

by the ethos embodied in these three

words

in fact it could be argued that black

lives matter has been the subtext

for every racial justice movement since

the time of jefferson himself

abolition was simply black lives matter

enough to be freed from chains

the civil rights movement was black

lives matter enough to be treated

equally

the black panther party stated that

black lives matter

enough to be defended by any means

necessary

can you hear us now then why has our cry

for help

been received as a battle cry could it

be that

the moral fiber of this country is so

eroded that it is now the warped

lens that jefferson feared if god is

just

then why can’t this country be even as

patriots invoke his name

during the pledge of allegiance and the

national anthem when some of us choose

to kneel

beneath the rhetoric and racial

narratives there are entire

human beings still waiting on the dream

to do right their lives

lost in the inhumane mythology of color

and the cultural consequences we’ve

artificially assigned to it

before they were hashtags and picket

signs and t-shirts

they were people this is the story of

one such person who’s dear to me

this is alonso alonzo’s birthday was the

day before mine so to make us feel

special

her moms made us share a cake he was a

kid who always used his

fingers for forks and the frosting for

spider-man face paint

well these days forks are no challenge

but birthdays are kind of hard for lonzo

see hasn’t had one since 2011. courtesy

of denver police

who snuffed the candles in his lungs

with the taser shock for every year

of his life that he breathed they said

that his strength was superhuman

like spiderman an altercation with a zoo

renter cop got out of hand

they treated the animals there more

humanely this black man

taking his last breath yards away from

african creatures and cages

and i know that there’s a metaphor in

there somewhere but all i remember

was his name on the news wondering why

some disturbance in the force hadn’t

warned me

wondering if the sound waves played

tricks on the air wondering if

he indeed just walked through heaven’s

gates why i wasn’t the one greeting him

there

see eight years before the denver police

handcuffed me to a chair

and beat me like i stole the tax dollars

i already paid them

my parents investment in me in their

crosshairs

every gas mile every meal every

storybook lesson

rests in the hands of uncle sam’s new

slave patrol weapons

but when the beast spit you out alive

buried in the sweat from the moments you

thought were the last before you died

who teaches you how to deal with

regretting survival

when the shame at a second chance got

you nearly suicidal alonzo

it should have been you writing this

poem and said i speak the ballad of

another dead soldier

and this war we didn’t ask for oldest

history’s pages

you and i african creatures born into

uniform doing life

in invisible cages this is the ballad of

another dead soldier

when the bullets kept going like the

families had to

and ricocheting off the tombstones i

keep his taste buds

in the graveyard that sings in my mouth

like i can somehow speak their alternate

futures into this one like

somewhere right now magically trayvon

martin is a model

all six foot three of us now chiseled

framed standing tall

like the pride of his mama beer game on

a honey like his daddy

clean like zimmerman’s hands had he just

followed

directions and somewhere oscar grant is

an actor alongside michael b

jordan never knowing that he’s staring

at his movie reflection

in fruitvale station is just another

train stop

and somewhere george floyd’s lungs never

paused for a moment of silence

his heart never called in black between

the beats instead he screamed

i can’t breathe from laughter that

christmas when his daughter

got licorice stuck in her teeth and

somewhere right now

sandra bland just received her first

non-profit grant

she and her fiance expect a child this

november all because a cop swallowed his

pride in a texas traffic stop

and the incident he barely remembers

these are the lives

and black lives matter the haters never

hear past the black

just get triggered from being awakened

from their raceless slumbers

content with real destinies reduced to

faceless numbers and somewhere

alonzo ashley made it out of that zoo

and eight years before

i tragically made it on to the news and

this poem

was never written and you’re not in

these seats just a candlelight vigil

held at my tomb

but for reasons i can’t name i survived

here to eulogize the fallen and i must

go on coping with the guilt

of being alive won’t you join me in

singing their songs

our voice is ringing out like the battle

of jericho

until the blue wall of silence falls

into the blue wall of silence

falls into the blue wall of silence

[Music]

falls

you