Alton Sterling. Shot dead by Police. Selling CDs. Caught on video. Another one.

Don't bother watching the gruesome video. You've seen it before...many times. There will be more.

A hi-res phone video camera is not the luxury item for black Americans that it is for other communities. Sadly, it's now a necessary tool of self defense. One of the nuances of being black in America.

Stop saying All Lives Matter. Start proving it. Be a human being and not an arrogant, judgmental catch phrase.

A black man selling CDs is shot 8 times while lying on his back, yet white supremacist Dylan Roof guns down 9 black people in a church and is captured peacefully by police. They even took him to Burger King!

‪#‎AllLivesObviouslyDontMatter‬

12 year old Tamir Rice was playing in a park with a toy gun in an Open Carry State, and was shot in cold blood by police...yet, 3 white biker gangs shot up Waco, Texas, killing 9 people, injuring 20, and shooting at police, and somehow 170 of these armed men were peacefully arrested. All are currently out free and none have gone to trial.

#AllLivesObviouslyDontMatter

Freddie Gray had his spine severed and his larynx crushed in police custody, and died a week later without ever receiving attention. A police statement claimed he miraculously shattered his own spine and crushed his own larynx. No one has explained how a man with a crushed larynx and spine walked so normally out of the police van into his cell, answering all the obligatory questions without a single police officer noticing as he died over the course of days with no medical attention. No one has gone to jail for this.

#AllLivesObviouslyDontMatter

Sandra Bland earned 2 university degrees and was heading to a job at a university when she was pulled over by police. She was found dead in her cell 2 days later. No one has gone to jail for this.

#AllLivesObviouslyDontMatter

There's tons more...
A Guardian study reveals that in the US, 1 in 65 deaths of young black males is caused by being shot by police. Being shot by police is now the leading cause of death of young black men.

#AllLivesObviouslyDontMatter

45% of all UNARMED people killed by police in the US is black.

#AllLivesObviouslyDontMatter

The Head of the FBI James Twomey said there is clear evidence of racial bias in policing across the US. Hard stats.

#AllLivesObviouslyDontMatter

And before someone brings it up, police deaths is thankfully at its lowest number since Reagan was President. BUT...Deaths by police this year is at a record high.

Yet when black people facing this type of brutality which has gone on for centuries, speak out in protest, they're told to be patient. To be respectful, and told where and when they can protest...and how.

People who I never see post a single comment asking how the Hell in 2016, the leading cause of death of young black males is getting killed by police, have tons to say to disparage the people who bring up this issue and demand change.

Why can't you ask "What if that was my child/father/brother/sister/friend?" Why is it so hard to have empathy for a 12 yr old black kid playing in a park, or a woman with 2 degrees going for her first big job? Or a poor young black man who's hustling selling CDs to look after his family, instead of begging on the streets?

If your 12 year old son was playing in the park by himself with a toy gun, and you saw video of a policeman shoot him in cold blood and stand over him watching him die, and you spoke out against that injustice...what would you say if someone responded by saying: AllLivesMatter!

What ever happened to empathy? Be a human being.

I'm tired of wasting time and energy arguing with people who are more concerned with their convenience and comfort than with the fact that black Americans are standing in a pool of their own blood. I'm tired of explaining right and wrong to people who should have learned it in Kindergarten.

I'm tired of people who in the words of Martin Luther King: "...are more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom..."

Stop saying AllLivesMatter until it's true.

By the way - I'll save you some time. We will learn every sordid detail of this victim's life to justify why he deserved to die. There will be marching for 2 weeks, with counter marching from the growing AllLivesMatter movement, maybe even sprinkled in with a KKK presence and armed white supremacist 'Patriot groups.' The policemen will be exonerated by a carefully manipulated grand jury. And quietly, a year from now Alton Sterling's family, and Philando Castile's families will be paid $5 - $6.5 million (the going rate of these settlements) in taxpayers money in a civil settlement by the City "While not admitting any wrongdoing." It's now a cost of doing business built into police budgets...it's normal.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

AllLivesObviouslyDontMatter