Basic Dignity
This week Jayland Walker was buried in Akron, Ohio. In a funeral reminiscent of that of Emmett Till, hundreds of mourners walked by an open casket containing the body of a young man brutalized by racist violence. Jayland Walker was killed by Akron police after being stopped for a traffic violation. He was shot more than 60 times, on foot and unarmed. Jayland Walker was 25 years old, loved by his family, friends and community. His life and all the possibilities it held are now gone. His death, like that of so many young men at the hands of police, was recorded, graphically showing the hail of bullets fired at him by 8 police officers. His lifeless body was handcuffed.
Every day somewhere in this country, someone dies at the hands of the police. Jayland Walker is one of at least 588 people who have been killed by police this year. Experts predict that once again more than a thousand people a year will die at the hands of police. That is roughly three people a day. These are needless deaths, reflecting a culture of violence that enables police to exert and justify massive force against individuals, often for the most trivial of reasons.
In this week of Jayland Walker’s funeral, little attention has been paid to him, his family or the city that shaped his life and death in the mainstream media. In the two years since the killing of George Floyd sparked the largest protest movement in the history of the country, the media has gradually moved to downplay coverage of police brutality. Still thousands of people in cities across the country have joined people in Akron to take to the streets. Increasingly these protests are being met with intense police repression.
In Akron, after a public meeting about the killing of Mr. Walker, police attacked people as they left the event. The mayor of the city imposed a curfew and called demonstrators “violent” and “lawless.” He blamed “outside agitators.” Police arrested relatives of Breonna Taylor and Jacob Blake, Jr. for peacefully demonstrating solidarity with the people of Akron. Police used pepper spray, rubber bullets, clubs and physical force against protestors and engaged in mass arrests. People were held in the country jail for days without access to medical care or the right to make a phone call. The FBI is now assisting Akron police.
All of this should sound familiar to Detroiters who took the Detroit Police Department to court for similar tactics. Meanwhile the very same actions continue in Grand Rapids. In the early spring, a group of people driving to a protest were pulled over and arrested. “Two of the six people were charged with misdemeanor assault, resisting and obstructing a police officer. The other four face felonies.”
Both the general lack of attention paid to the death of Jayland Walker by mainstream media and the silence about the brutality sanctioned by authorities against those who protest police violence are important for us to acknowledge. We are in the midst of concerted efforts by the corporate elite to turn reality upside down, to label those who protest violence a problem and to get us to think that taking away basic rights and expanding the powers of the state will lead to greater security. This line of argument, rooted in the denial of actual experience of the vast majority of people and in a disdain for basic human dignity, is at the core of corporate, media, and police efforts to hold power.
Resolving this crisis requires a deep understanding of how much we need to change, how much we need to create, to provide for a society where our young people simply have the right to live full, productive lives, to grow old and to have the basic dignity that belongs to all human beings.