“Yo, what up, what up, this is Chris from Brookyn Wildlife.
And um…[clears throat] a lot of the stuff that I post is about music, and about art, and culture, and it’s important, but it’s not like life and death important. What I’m about to post now is about life and death.
Another person of color was killed by the police. Another unarmed person of color killed by the police, on camera, and nothing’s really being done yet about it, and no one’s really addressing how frequently this happens.
And—I’ve seen some people online, like, ‘yo, wait ’til the information comes out,’ ‘yo, don’t blame the police, there are always mistakes, humans are fallible, don’t just blame the whole system of America by these, you know, specific points of contention.’
And, I think y’all are too distant. I think there’s a problem where the people talking about this, it’s not real to them. And to me, it is real.
Like, my homie Vaughn got shot by the police back when I was in college. My homie Surafel got choked out and murdered by the police after I finished college. People I know in the past five, ten years have been brutalized by the police—for doing nothing.
And…it’s easy to talk about it and act like, yeah, all lives matter and like, humans need to treat humans properly, but seriously, there’s something systematically wrong, where people devalue the life of black men.
And there’s no recourse. People know that you can murder a black man and no one will bat an eye. And part of that is ‘cuz no one seems to care.
So all the non-black people that hear this, share it. Tell your friends, shit is real. All the people that are black, you already know, continue whatever the fuck you do. But for all the people that act like it’s not real, like it’s distant, it’s not distant.
In my life, in my life experiences, I’ve had cops pull guns out on me when I wasn’t doing anything, while I was in grad school, at Columbia, you know? Like, I’ve had friends who’ve had their lives taken away by the police! I’ve had other friends who’ve been hospitalized by the police.
And nothing ever happens. Nothing’s ever done about it.
And so now, what? What are we gonna do? What are you gonna do? You gonna send a letter to your congress person? You gonna march in the street? You gonna [shakes head] somehow make some music that helps change the world?
But…somebody has to do something. And I don’t know what it’s gonna be, I’m open to suggestions, but it’s scary for me to know that the same people that protect all y’all—y’all being the people that aren’t black men—the same people that protect y’all are willing to kill me, in the blink of an eye, like my life doesn’t matter.”
Curator, futurist, and fine artist. All things indie.