Just imagine ma’s anguish

How frustrating it must be to stand on the stage of a national political convention and tell the world the pain you feel when a cop unjustly takes your child’s life, only to wake up the next morning to learn that the justice you seek — the only thing holding you together every day — is just a myth.

Freddie Gray’s mother wasn’t on the stage at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia on Tuesday, but she may as well have been. Gloria Darden’s agony is as real as the anguish shared by these “Mothers of the Movement” who inspired a spirited “Black Lives Matter” chant in a hall where a woman, a mother, a grandmother, had just been nominated to be President of the United States.

It could have only gotten worse when, just a little more than 12 hours later, prosecutors in Baltimore announced that Gray’s black life didn’t matter at all.

If Gray’s black life mattered, he wouldn’t have been left to bounce around in the back of a police van, his cries for help ignored.

If Gray’s black life mattered, prosecutors wouldn’t have been up against a stacked deck that makes it so hard for cops to be held responsible for abusing the public trust.

If Gray’s black life mattered, prosecutors might have been able to take their chances with a different judge, instead of the same one who, in successive bench trials, gave cop after cop a free pass.