This YouTube video is so striking, it deserves a space all of its own. Some of its violence is brutal, shocking and from the filmers’ perspective, apparently pointless as well. The film’s title says it all: If You See Something, Film Something (Recording The Police is a Dangerous but Necessary Thing To Do). Make sure you watch carefully and observe what’s really happening, instead of what the police are suggesting that you see: in the very first scene, the police surrounding a man say something to him about putting his gun down, but he’s actually holding a snow scraper. And then they shoot him 8 times.
I cried like a baby after watching this all the way through. The abuse portrayed is horrible, warped, ugly and jarring. The commentator says, “Black America could only have been shocked by what happened to Rodney King if what happened was alien to their experience.” We are the government, people, and when we refuse to govern what we’re bound to end up with is abuse and chaos in our social systems, because systems break down without guidance. We need to hold our public servants accountable. We also need to hold ourselves to that same standard. We must absolutely try harder to make our society well, and not rest until we get much better results.