Rekia Boyd. Freddie Gray. Eric Garner. Walter Scott. The list is a mile long.

These people and the incidents surrounding them matter.

Horror films. New albums. Streaming services. Gifs.

These things, not so much.

It’s a conscious decision not to write about real issues. There’s a sense of respect and dignity that those topics deserve that I struggle with. But it’s more than simply that. If i wrote about the things that truly matter in this world, it would by turns, terrify and sadden me to the point of immobility. Just a quick scroll through my Twitter timeline or my Tumblr feed confirms dignity and respect for your humanity are not acknowledged by our fellow man as they should be. Uniforms are not necessarily an indication of help.  Even the innocent should regard them with extreme caution.

The one saving grace about these senseless tragedies is that people are still angry. People are still standing. People are still screaming at the top of their lungs and those screams will be heard. The people are screaming and now, but it is not just conjecture, hearsay and anger that we the people have. It is video. There are images. We can show that Black people and minorities have been and are deliberately targeted. Even in the age of photoshop, it’s hard to argue with video.

Yet even now, the powers-that-be like to feign ignorance. It’s as though, they’d like us not to believe our own us and simply trust that their way is necessary for “peace” to continue in our land. It’s as though they forget that the land we walk on was not forged from peace. It was taken. It was bled for. And it was kept by blood, sweat and bullets.

Ours is a young republic. It is merely a teenager. It’s bloody history colors it’s every move and violent upheaval is only natural. But, those mistakes and poor handling of situations must be acknowledged and dealt with, not ignored and allowed to fester and continue to breed more ills.

The people scream because it is not acknowledged. They scream because even if it is, justice is not served. They scream because children belong playing in the sun and not in coffins. They scream because those same children should be playing with their parents, not attending their funerals. They scream because they are shown the courts do not seek to punish the crimes. They scream because that is enough.

But now the screams come with video proof and the screamers have social media platforms. We see you and now so does everyone else. This is not my wheelhouse, but this “incidents” keep happening. I’d rather be watching a film about a fictional monster, not reading about the ones in uniform tasked with “keeping us safe.” It’s safer inside a celluloid terror because, eventually it will end.  Someone always pays and the monster usually dies.  The violent deaths above weren’t perpetrated by the boogie man, they were by real humans able to hide behind the law.  I’ll go back to “Ringu” now but before I do, please know that although I willingly exist in a cloud of sometimes morbid yet often trivial distractions, I too have seen the video and I do hear the real screams.