Today, I write you in your eighth year. Even though this is earlier than I should have to write you, I am already too late. I am writing to you today because you saw George Floyd suffocate to death as a police officer kneed his neck down on asphalt. This month alone, you saw police break into Breonna Taylor’s home in the middle of the night and end life with 8 bullets after she worked to save others on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the same week, you saw police shoot Ahmed Aubrey for taking a run around his neighborhood. Last year, here in your own neighborhood of Pittsburgh, you saw another unarmed African American by the name of Antwon Rose Jr. die at the hands of the same officers who vowed to protect him.
This Memorial Day, the same officers that ended the dreams of George, Breonna, Ahmed, Antwon, and so many others will collect their pensions while they living their American Dreams. They will taste the hot dogs and hamburgers on their tongues and smell the 50 SPF sunscreen. They will feel the sun beating down on their blinding bare skin as the freshly mowed grass tickles their toes in the backyards of their perfect houses and lives. While they live out their dreams, George, Breonna, Ahmed, and Antwon will never wake up.
Today I woke up from my hazy American Dream to a chilling nightmare. As I watched George Floyd take his last breaths, my mind instantly wandered back in time to watch you gasping for breath through muffled cries. I followed the precise instructions on how to safely secure your forehead in a restraint, but I couldn’t help but nestle your curlicues and try to wipe your tears away as 4 grown adults held you down to the cold hard ground by your ankles and wrists. They tackled you to the ground and restrained when you through a tantrum on hot dog and hamburger day at the psychiatric hospital that better prepared you for the penitentiary than promise.
I knew you well enough to know you cried because you didn’t have the words to say that you missed your mom’s cooking since she’s behind bars. You two did not come from cookouts, freshly mowed lawns, apple pie, ice-cream sundaes, and fireworks. You came from scraping by paycheck to paycheck, always hungry, alone, and scared to death. No wonder you are only 8 years old and already afraid to die.
America, what should I tell my 8-year-old when he can’t sleep at night because he’s afraid to wake up to another broken promise? How can I make him feel safe in a school where he has to suit up with a bullet-proof backpack? America, would you put down your weapons for him?