gun to your head, handcuffs on your wrist

"Gun to your head, handcuffs on your wrists
everywhere we at we gotta start to resist
Black po' people get no JUSTICE
the courts, the judge, and the jury is fixed
every ghetto you go, sick of this shT
throw up your fist if you sick of this shT"
-Dead Prez, "Cop Shot"

I've always had a love-hate relationship with authority. I'll follow the rules, but I'll also break them on occasion. Sometimes, even telling me I cannot or should not do something can often compel me to go against the grain.

To some people, the most easily-recognizable form of authority are police officers. As a black man, you learn to hone that love/hate relationship. Some take it to either extreme, yet there is usually at least a small amount of angst within every black man in America reserved for the boys in blue.

Today, I am getting caught up on the serious tragedy that went down in Oakland a mere 2 hours after 2009 came into effect. A 22-year-old, unarmed brother was shot in his back - while laying face down - at a public transit station by a 2-year veteran officer. There are several videos recorded by fellow passengers form that night that have surfaced on the web. And I'm sure there are even more still out there.

The raw video footage from that night is a painful sight to witness. It is far more egregious than the Rodney King incident or any police brutality beatings I have ever seen. It evokes the spirit of many past police brutality episodes and killings. I've often brushed aside some of the rah-rah behind complaints of police brutality because of the stark contrast in volume compared to the unarmed brothers that get gunned down in hood everyday. But this is beyond comprehensible. I've participated in both kinds of marches in the past - peace ones and anti-police brutality ones - and felt compelled to write about this while the imagery was still fresh in my mind as Oakland is literally on edge.

There has already been all sorts of analysis from folks in the area as well as their peoples around the world as more catch wind of the news. I read one comment that compared the hood to Gaza and the police to Israel, which - in making the simplest of analogies - does in deed conjure up a lot of interesting comparisons that can be more dissected fully.

PS - Anybody from Chucktown know where my old buddy Reuben Greenberg is?