Just Stop It!

According to a whole bunch of online newspapers and other news-sites, including Reuters and about a dozen or so others–two police officers were shot last night in Ferguson, MO, during a protest outside the Ferguson Police station. The Chief had recently resigned, and these folks were going bananas–though not as bad as during the Darren Wilson trial.

The police were on riot control, and were shot from a distance that no one seems to agree upon. One took a bullet in the shoulder, the other in the face. Both men are alive, though in serious condition.

These two officers were not fighting with angry and large young men. They weren’t choking anyone. They were likely standing still, and waiting to do their jobs in the event the protest “escalated.”

Clearly it did.

I get the injustice these people feel, though I suspect few to none of the protesters have done their due diligence regarding what they are carrying their signs for. Certainly none are mentioning (or taking into consideration) the commonality these events resulting in the deaths of African-American men all share.

They were fighting police–not really the wisest course of action.

These men and women who have maybe a second or two at best to make a decision that affects so many, including their own if they do not act accordingly, relative to what’s going on around them.

Don’t scrap with police. Sort it out later. Wouldn’t it be better to sort out the details later?

And sure, black lives matter. But so do police lives.

All lives matter.

And that hands up thing? From what several different reports show, that isn’t what happened.

But anyway.

I just don’t really understand how people can act in protest when they don’t really even know the whole story about something. I think it would be a fair statement to say many only know what they’ve heard, and feel they are protesting out of righteous indignation and a legitimate search for justice.

Which is not shooting policemen in the face when they are standing still and not fighting anybody.

How will that instigate change in their communities?

How will that find justice for anyone?

Also, how is shooting someone because they’re wearing blue any different from what they’re protesting; shooting someone because they’re black?

The world really does make me sad.

Clearly, there are still racial issues which need to be addressed. I think that goes “both ways.”

We learn so much from culture alone–whether it’s white people or black people we are talking about. We learn how to act around certain types of people–or how those people expect us to. We learn how and what to fear. We learn how to hate.

That’s for all cultures.

And it’s bull.

If we learned it, we can unlearn it.

The question is, how do we get the ball rolling?

Not with violence, from either “side” of the issue.

Not by fostering a social climate of fear and prejudice, nor one of hatred and a desire for Wild West-style retribution.

All lives matter.

All lives.

All.

For pity’s sake, stop all this nonsense. Everybody just breathe for a second.

Is it really worth killing anyone?