Police Brutality

It didn’t take George Floyd’s killing at the hands of the police for me to recognize that I have been complicit in state-executed violence against black families. But it did take his murder and the protests that have roiled the nation since to compel me to articulate it, which is shameful.

Jha’asryel-Akquil Bishop, 24, was born and raised in Guyana, where they were an ambassador for the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport. In 2015, they attended the seventh Summit of the Americas in Panama City.

Over the past several days, America has, yet again, borne witness to how deeply its people are wounded and angered over the disproportionate use of deadly force by police on African Americans. 

The following essay by 17-year-old Keyma Flight is a winning submission in a Youth Voices contest held by Strategies for Youth, a national nonprofit focused on improving the relationship between law enforcement and young people.

Trayvon Martin, Kalief Browder and Mike Brown have three things in common: parents who fiercely loved them, siblings who cared for them deeply and dreams that were never realized. They are also young black men whose tragic deaths started a national conversation about our broken justice system.

I arrive in St. Louis a month after the Darren Wilson verdict tore the lid off the facade of peaceful race relations in America. The last person to look Michael Brown in the face, speak to him, walks free as I tread the streets of my hometown and take in what’s left of Ferguson.