UPDATE D: There’s a Go-Fund-Me set up by the family hoping to cover funeral and other expenses at: www.gofundme.com/…
Update C: A7Sam, shared with me that Aaron Dean, the killer, has just bailed out on $200,000 bond (!). As well, JustBob shared that the dispatcher did not inform either officer that the call was a welfare check. The call was dispatched as an “open door” situation, which they appeared to interpret as “burglary in progress”. Both officers entered the property with guns drawn. No one has yet been able to determine who decided the caller’s request for a welfare check was wrong (recording available here). Fort Woth PD did not mention the 8 year old nephew in the official statement, as either present or as a witness. Apparently the chief had to be forced to admit the little boy existed, or that he was there. From heavy.com:
Fort Worth Police Chief Ed Kraus said during a press conference that the call taker relayed the call information to dispatch, who then relayed the details to the police officer. He said on October 15 that he wasn’t sure who determined the call was an open structure call and not a welfare check.
Update B: Just saw a post on twitter from an old friend of ours, Shaun King, who is contact with Lee Merritt, who has interviewed Atatiana’s nephew, Zion, 8 years old. Mr. Merritt, you may recall, is attorney for Botham Jean’s family and for Joshua Brown’s family (the dead witness to Botham Jean’s murder). Mr. Merritt also has an 8-year-old child, so is spending time with the little boy. More at the bottom of this diary, including a transcription of the summary of the little boy’s witness statement. Please read.
Updated to correct some grammar and readability.
I have been stewing about this latest “Executed by COP for living in my life in my own house while black” in Fort Worth this weekend. I can’t get Ms. Jefferson off my mind. I have been crying off and on about her, and also about what is happening to the Kurds, since yesterday. But I want to focus on Ms. Jefferson
Atatiana Jefferson was all of 28 years young when her life was cut short by a cop who acted like someone so eager to get a kill-shot off, that once he saw her he couldn’t even finish saying “Put your hands up. Show me your hands!” before he killed her.
I’ve been thinking about Atatiana Jefferson all day, but Shakespeare keeps popping into my head. I’ve been puzzling on why that is, and have come to a conclusion that one of his plays is just about the most righteous rant on the state and status of Persons of Color in the US today, on anyone who is Othered in this country, for any reason. It is also deeply relevant to what our government is doing to the Kurds, our most faithful allies in the Middle East, but who are less than, in the President’s eyes, because the do nothing for him, they are Muslim, and they are not White. Let me tell you how I feel.
Some of my sorrow and rage around Ms. Jefferson, is multilayered.
- What she was doing, when she was shot, is an activity I engage in with my young nephew and have, for years: playing video games in the evening, into the night, with him; often sitting in the dark, losing track of time. I’ve forgotten to get up to close and lock the doors, when doing that, only realizing when I begin yawning that it’s after two and he should have been asleep hours ago.
- Despite my advanced age, I identify with her because, like her, I’m female and a person of color. I’m well-educated, care-taking family, tending to my business, and
- for the FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE, I am afraid, because, when Ms. Jefferson was killed, it became clear that we, who are not white, who have believed that if we established an island of tranquility around and within our homes, we who believed we would be rendered safe from intrusion by the cops if played by the rules, are no longer safe ANYWHERE. Not in this country.
This second, indefensible cop-murder in Fort Worth has shown us all that. The cops have shown us all that doing everything society expects of us, no longer keeps us safe. Not on the streets, not at work, not in traffic, not in the park, not in the store, not outside the store, not in school, NO WHERE.
These people were not safe, had done nothing wrong, and died for that: Botham Jean and Atatiana Jefferson. IN THEIR OWN HOMES. Nor did innocence, having done nothing wrong, or asking why they were being harassed by a cop, if they got the chance, keep Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, John Crawford III, or so, so many others I could name, safe and breathing.
I was answering replies on another diary when lines from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice kept popping into my head. In fact, it was Shylock’s soliloquy I kept hearing, and suddenly, it was very important that I share this two-parts-rant, one-part-plea, with you. If you have read this far, I wish to ask you to keep reading below the fold and think about what I’m trying to say. At minimum, substitute “White Person” for “Person of Color” and “Person of Color” for “White”, and see if it what is written means the same thing to you. Then think about THAT.
I first saw Merchant of Venice on Stage in junior high, and Shylock’s speech struck me right between the eyes. I GOT IT immediately. When I heard the soliloquy, I realized immediately that, although Shylock was written as Shylock the Jew, he could have been Shylock the Ethiopian, Shylock the Moor, Shylock the Arab, Shylock the Old, Shylock the Mandarin, Shylock the Basque, Shylock the Disabled, Shylock the Egyptian, Shylock the Hindu, Shylock the Blind, Shylock the Tibetan, Shylock the Hottentot, Shylock the Tongan, Shylock the Maori, Shylock the Nigerian, Shylock the Apache, Shylock the Osage.
That what he’d experienced made him wicked was besides the point; that Shakespeare expressed some prejudice in his depiction of Shylock the man matters only because Shylock could have been ANYBODY who has been Othered, pushed Outside, Oppressed, Suppressed, and the speech would be the same, have the same resonance. That was a very heavy realization for a 13-year-old child to have, but such was my experience. I don’t know if Shakespeare meant it the way I took it, but here’s his Shylock’s soliliquy, modified and bolded:
… I am a [Person of Color]. Hath
not a [Person of Color] eyes? hath not a [Person of Color] hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a [White person] is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
Revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will [also]
resemble you in that. If a [Person of Color] wrong a [White person],
what is his humility? Revenge. If a [White person]
wrong a [Person of Color], what should his sufferance be by
[a White Person’s] example? Why, Revenge. …
But, for Persons of Color, there is no revenge, for revenge is certain death, and revenge is always wrong. There is no redress, because we are not valued. Or cared for. Or thought of. If we ask redress, we may end up dead. Or like Atatiana Jefferson, we may end up dead, for the crime of living, minding her own business, but not being White.
UPDATE: PirateCafe and several others posted in the comments that the policeman who shot Atatiana Jefferson has resigned. Per CBS news:
A white police officer who shot and killed a 28-year-old black woman in her Texas home as she played video games with her nephew resigned Monday amid calls from the woman's family for him to be fired and criminally charged. The Fort Worth Police Department said officers responded at about 2:25 a.m. Saturday after a neighbor called a non-emergency line to report the home's front door had been left open. The responding officer fired a shot through a window, killing Atatiana Jefferson.
Merritt tweet and Zion’s statement summary:
STATEMENT TRANSCRIPT: Lee Merritt
This is Zion. Saturday morning he was playing Halo with his auntie Tay [Atatiana Jefferson]. She was really good for a grown up. In fact, he would never admit it but she was better than him. They stayed up all Friday night, into the early morning hours playing X-box and enjoying a fall breeze with the doors open.
They had lost track of time but he could tell it was really late when they both heard movement outside of Tay's bedroom window. They looked at each other and listened more intently when they heard it again. Someone was outside.
Tay went to the window to see who was out there. Suddenly a man's voice was screaming something he couldn't make out and then BANG! Atatiana Jefferson crumpled to the floor. I didn't ask Zion what he saw next. I didn't want him to have to relive that with me. I don't know how this is possible but Zion's eyes are still so full of light, love and optimism. Today he was focused on the beads I wear on my wrist.
My own 8 year old son won them for me at Dave & Busters. We played games together for hours and at the end of the night ne used the tickets he won to buy me these beads. I split them with Zion because prizes is what you expect after playing games all night with a cool adult ... not this. I'm hurt. I'm angry. I'm a little afraid when I'm honest. I hate this happened to Zion. I hate it happened to Tay and her beautiful family.
This has to stop now. Enough.