Turns out police are the extreme violent group

Black people continue to draw their last breaths at the hands of police officers. Most recently George Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in Louisville and Tony Mcdade in Tallahassee.

In response, cities across America have been set on fire. We’re in for a blazing summer, a season ignited by a deep agitation and mobilization to save black lives from police violence. Yet somehow people focus only on denouncing the burning, looting, and the defacement of property. We live in an America where broken windows are more obscene than the lifeless bodies of our black brothers and sisters.

Racism is the chronic virus in law enforcement that is causing this civil unrest. Unlike COVID-19, there’s nothing novel about this pandemic.

Today’s modern policing is the successor of slave patrols. Black slaves were considered property and these patrols were bent on returning and protecting property from the start. Black people have been terrorized for centuries for seeking their freedom. And this unwritten law of property over people continues.

A pack of cigarettes. A stolen car.

No amount of property is worth someone’s life.

Here in Denver, we remember the many people who have died at the hands and triggers of law enforcement: Marvin Booker. Michael Marshall. Jessie Hernandez. Ryan Ronquillo. Paul Castaway.

Police departments have killed with impunity and struck fear in the communities they purport to serve. They have also tapped financial resources with taxpayer funded settlements and government grants to continue their reign of terror. In 2018, the Denver Police Department received a $240,000 grant for countering violent extremism from the Department of Homeland Security. The grant proposal named groups like Black Lives Matter, anti-racist groups and queer organizations as potential hot spots for domestic terrorism. Here’s the irony: For many, police are the extremist violent group.

Police and POTUS continue to condone violence against protestors. Police in paramilitary gear itch to flex the power they hold, to put into practice the terrifying formations, disabling holds, and chemical weapons authorized to them.

It’s not the protesters destroying property who have failed to show restraint; it’s our paramilitary police. The leaders of our city including Mayor Michael Hancock and Chief Paul Pazen are especially callous in permitting the use of chemicals against residents — especially during a pandemic that attacks respiratory systems. There is no respect for the sanctity of life, only a devotion to property.

The statements law enforcement have put out are meaningless when they continue to teargas protesters. The message is clear through DPD’S actions. Don’t forget that the Chief Pazen locking arms in the daytime with protesters is the same one who makes the order to teargas at night.

While thousands have braved a pandemic and paramilitary forces for the lives of black folks, something else has caught on fire. The radical hearts of young and old.

You don’t have to identify as a radical to do something. The discomfort it takes to confront your neighbor, friend or family member on their anti-black sentiments is insignificant compared to the pain black communities feel. Support a bail fund, call officials, do anything in your power to act for justice this month.

June is a month with a legacy of righteous riots and rebellions. Let us honor Juneteenth as the commemoration of black slaves in the U.S. learning of their freedom. Let’s remember that Pride was a revolt led by queer, trans and non-binary people of color against police brutality.

All those activists taught us that agitation is necessary for change. This isn’t a mob mentality. This is collective suffering spilling into action.

Remember that all movements have advocates, activists, agitators, scholars, students, workers organizers, street medics, faith leaders, artists and healers. We need the spectrum of civil disobedience and a diversity of tactics.

Calls for justice, wails of pain, chants with obscenities and prayers for change can exist simultaneously. They are all equally righteous.

But whatever you do, do not police each other. Don’t blame the people for burning the city if its officials put profits and police before their lives.

If you don’t agree, that’s OK, get out of the way and remember you aren’t the target. It’s the racist system that’s going down in flames.

Mimi Madrid is a Denverraised writer who works as a communications content writer at a non-profit providing nursing care for new mothers.