(This is a fringe diary, feel free to walk on by. But I have to say this somewhere before I can move another step forward. I am not asking for comment or rec’s or debate. Whatever you do is your business. I’d lke to say this and walk away myself. I can’t. But I wish I could, because a son, a brother, an uncle, a cousin, a friend to those who knew him was killed and his body cut up twice before his family could even conduct a modest go-fund-me funeral for him and then turn their shattered hearts towards the gargantuan task of seeking justice, or even simple answers. The truth, in the end. Justice is the truth, justice is the only answer. I pray they find both, and I march to make sure. His name needs to be uttered, it has to be said. His name was Andres Guardado. Say his name, but say it in the streets. Say it on the street where we live. Keep saying it.
Stay in the streets until there is justice on them. That’s the only way forward. Every other move is to walk away, to turn away, to move backwards. )
Andres Guardado was murdered. His killer stood, possibly casually, definitely cold-bloodedly over his fatally-wounded body and riddled him with holes like he was spitting on a grave, deliberately and hatefully defiling sacred ground, which in essence, he was. He shot Andres in the back as he posed in surrender, kneeling, and the force of one and maybe two of the first bullets blew him sprawling to the pavement, then he continued firing into him, stepping forward slightly, i think straddling the unarmed teenager.
There was no heroic quick draw, there was no holstered gun, and there was no pistol where Andres could reach it. If there had been a pistol on the ground, why was he shot first while still kneeling? The angle of the initial shot (not pictured here) shows what occurred. Andres was likely dead before he even hit the ground, executed gangland style. “One to put them down, then empty the clip just to be sure.”
If you can draw a stick figure and a straight line, you can see through the lies here. LASD lost all credibility when they panic-smashed security cameras in the aftermath of this heinous crime, this murder most foul. We have to assume the worst because we’ve been shown the worst. The biggest failure of the American people in the modern era is their lack of vision. To truly envision how bad things can be and and how bad they already, are and where that all leads to. When the tell you who they are, believe them, said Maya Angelou. This killing sends a message.
Pick up the phone. Listen. No one is mumbling here. It’s speaking plainly to all of us, that voice. It’s saying they matter and you don’t, and to shut up & like it.
The moment I heard of this “officer involved-shooting,” I had to look, we all need to see what is going on. Very very quickly we learned the ONLY important fact that was neither spun, nor suppressed, by the LASD, and that was that deputies panicked and removed the ability of their actions after the shooting to be recorded. The rest, as we see, is only a simple picture with a few straight lines left un-penciled in. CAN YOU DRAW A STRAIGHT LINE or not? It’s that easy. And just that hard, too. It means we have see what connects the nation we live in from the ideals it was formed to stand for, and realize they will always complete an unflinchingly imperfect blueprint.
When cops have the same powers as a slave owner, the implicit, explicit and contractual right to kill someone with impunity, they are no different functionally than a slave owner or even the more powerful figure, the slave patrol member. Abolish slavery. It’s past time to defund police and put an end to qualified immunity. Andres Guardado, like so many others was put in the position of an enslaved person in relation to the Los Angeles Sheriff Deputy Miguel Vega, and what happened is not only a capital crime it is a open affront to the concept of a civil society.