December 30: Last night, every time I fell asleep, I woke up crying and sweating,and absolutely terrified that something had happened to my sons. I spent the entire night running back and forth between their room and mine. Even when I stood at the door of their room, I didn’t calm down until I shook them, just a bit, to make sure that they were still breathing. The pattern kept repeating itself until I finally made a palette on the floor of their room and sat there reading and watching them all night. My heart breaks for the mother of #TamirRice #TyroneWest #MikeBrown #TrayvonMartin #JohnCrawford #EzellFord #DanteParker #TanishaAnderson #RumainBrisbon #AkaiGurley #JerameReid #TonyRobinson #PhillipWhite #EricHarris #RekiaBoyd #EricGardner #DontreHamilton #AiyanaJones #JordanDavis #WalterScott because my horrible nightmare is their reality. #BlackChildrenMatter
December 29: Musings…
Musings #1 Justice is not blind. It sees that we are black and then, as always, it rules against us. #TamirRice was 12 and grown folks are now debating and discussing and justifying why it was ok for him to be shot and killed while he was in a park, playing by himself. This is what racism looks like. This is why I fight and march and scream and pray. This is why I yell #BlackLivesMatter at the top of my lungs, working hard to drown out the #AllLivesMatter choir. This is why I pray my head off every time my teenage boys leave the house. This right here is one of my greatest fears for I am a black woman raising black boys in America. Rest in power #TamirRice – your name will not be forgotten.
Musing #2 I am sitting here Angry, about racism, about injustice, about oppression, and about the absolute cluelessness of folks who don’t seem to care or understand or recognize why we must keep saying that #BlackLivesMatter!; in Pain, because I am the mother of two black boys who walk around everyday with a target on the back; Frustrated, because how do we change a racist system that does not see us or respect or or protect us?; and, Crying so hard that I can barely breathe because #TamirRice was 12 years old. He went outside to play in the park and was brutally murdered by a racist cop wielding a gun, a badge, and a blanket of protection from the system.
Musing #3 I will and I must continue to fight against this system. I will continue to fight until the whole world sings and recognizes that #BlackLivesMatter. I will not live to see this world change but I will die knowing that I did my part to bring it about. #TamirRice will not forgotten and neither will like #MichaelBrown #JohnCrawford #EzellFord #DanteParker #TanishaAnderson #AkaiGurley #RumainBrisbon #JerameReid #TonyRobinson #PhillipWhite #EricHarris #RekiaBoyd #EricGardner #DontreHamilton #AiyanaJones #JordanDavis #WalterScott and countless others….
August 2: Three years ago, after #TrayvonMartin died my sons wanted to know “Mommy, what are we going to do?” They asked that question as they begin to record, on their bedroom wall, the names of every unarmed black person who was killed by rogue cops or would be vigilantes…like #MichaelBrown #JohnCrawford #EzellFord #DanteParker #TanishaAnderson #AkaiGurley #RumainBrisbon #JerameReid #TonyRobinson #PhillipWhite #EricHarris #RekiaBoyd #EricGardner #DontreHamilton #AiyanaJones (2010) #JordanDavis #TamirRice #WalterScott – The list kept growing and growing and they kept asking me. We would speak their names into the wind and they kept asking me. We would pray for their families and still, they kept asking me. When #FreddieGray was murdered, they stopped asking and begin to tell me what we could to do to be involved. I mark that as the moment that their activist spirit, the one I had been nurturing and feeding and cultivating from the time that they could read and write, was finally released. I spoke about this at a Conference yesterday and a graphic artist captured my thoughts/my ideas/my sentiments and with the picture of me holding my boys – my heart!
Karsonya (Kaye) Wise Whitehead #blackmommyactivist 