What are you gonna do? What are we going to do? What can we do?
Rapper and activist Michael Render, better known as Killer Mike, wants those questions answered. He doesn’t profess to know the answers. He styles himself just another member of the community like anyone else.
Just as most people are, Mike is outraged by the violence and brutality perpetrated in the community by police, often against unarmed and defenseless victims.
But you won’t get any crocodile tears from Killer Mike. No whining, no crying, no yelling. Just an inward question or two. What are we going to do? What are we willing to do about it?
Speaking in front of a sold out, often-standing audience at the Memorial Union Theater Monday, Killer Mike threw down a mic-dropping challenge to everyone in attendance.
“It’s up to you if you truly believe that this system, this republic we call America and the greater world, should be fair for all human beings,” Killer Mike said. “It’s up to you. I’m charging you with the responsibility of being an ally every single day. And being an ally every single day doesn’t mean you necessarily go out and fight the fight everyday. But it means that you consciously help people that don’t look like you. It means that some social responsibility comes with the social power that you have.”
Will we use our dollar to protest companies associated with injustice? That could mean everything from refusing to fly United Airlines to simply choosing Coke over, well, Pepsi. Will we leave our banks when we are disrespected? Will we even leave our homes to go meet people who don’t look like us? Most of all, will we truly show outrage when those same people are mistreated or does mistreatment only apply to people who look like us?
Killer Mike didn’t offer the Union Theater crowd solutions to these problems. Only the challenge to find the courage to make our own solutions.
Killer Mike challenged the audience to simply be the best version of whatever they can be. That it meant seeing other people. Being willing to push forward on behalf of other people.
For whites, simply, it meant getting out of the house (or Starbucks) and going to the park on the “other” side of town. To do more than consider their own comfort and let their kids play with other kids who don’t look like them and begin to form bonds that drive out fear of the Other.
While it sounds simplistic or even naïve to think that just mingling with other parents of kids from other communities could help overcome a system of racial injustice, Killer Mike and many others believe that’s exactly what is needed. Familiarity and experience with people drives out fear of them. It is that fear that creates the circumstances people often end up angry about.
Anyone who doesn’t believe that or calls it simplistic can just go on Youtube and see for themselves what fear of the Other will do. Those who do may find something like this.
The video begins abruptly. Confusion permeates the air as two strong, armed and trained city police officers violently throw down a petite teenage girl.
Although 18, she looks hardly older than a Junior High student and barely resembles a physical threat. Still, the officers react as if she is Mike Tyson. They batter her with their knees and hit her even well after she had been handcuffed and subdued.
Officer Andrew Muir, of the Madison Police Department, the officer most responsible for the assault, was defended by Police Chief Mike Koval, who said the video doesn’t show the entire context of the scene.
For many, two grown men beating up a little girl doesn’t require context. Genele Laird’s life was damaged and changed that day. Beyond the events of that scene, the fact that Officer Andrew Muir continues to be a police officer in Madison and even work with mentally ill people, offends some people, who protested outside the Union Theater ahead of Killer Mike’s presentation Monday.
Rick Rosen and Gerry West are two of those protesters who stood outside the theater to show solidarity with those who think it is wrong for police involved in such brutality to continue on the force. They hoped to be inspired by Killer Mike’s words and wanted to bring awareness to people that these incidents don’t simply go away.
“It’s a really diverse community,” West says. “Andrew Muir is still there. To have police who used excessive force still be on the police force? These people shouldn’t be at that police station or maybe even be a police officer at all.”
Killer Mike, for his part, stands with part of that concept. He thinks white officers are often frightened of black people or suspects because the stereotypes white people are fed about blacks is that they are violent, untrustworthy and an imminent threat. Certainly the officers who beat the little girl, Genele Laird, could be accused of such a thing.
“If you want to be a policeman and protect your community, “ Killer Mike said, “then you should live in that community. I personally believe black people should be policed by black people.”
But, Killer Mike warns, that doesn’t mean black officers will be better at policing a black populace than anyone else in terms of being good at their jobs.
Mike simply states that it means they won’t be scared enough of a black person to just shoot them or beat them out of fear.
“It doesn’t mean those police are better, it doesn’t mean they’re good, it just means they aren’t scared enough to kill me when I’m a licensed gun owner,” Killer Mike said of same color policing. “It just means this person speaks the language I speak, these people understand the background I’m from, and this person will not be afraid to engage me.”
Engagement is Killer Mike’s answer to the systemic flaws causing police brutality and the so-called police state.
To explain his point, he brought the audience back to the proverbial park. All the kids were in the middle of the park playing. But all the parents were sitting apart from one another. The whites at one bench, the blacks at another, Muslims and Hindus at another. That separation in and of itself breeds fear of the Others and even contempt.
Fear and contempt that can explode out of control as the families of children like Tony Robinson and Michael Brown found out.
Killer Mike wants us to be allies with one another. He says the system isn’t just unfair to minorities, it’s unfair to everyone. But by being an ally with people who don’t look like us we can build familiarity and purpose and no longer be victimized by that system.
“The cage of the system oppresses you, not just me, as the victim,” he said. “As yourself, ‘why? Why am I allowing this to happen to other people?’ Because you are part of that system. Use your dollar, use your vote. What are you gonna do?”
With allies we can begin to point the finger at the people responsible for this systemic racism. We can point the finger at the people who need to change their ways and stop it.
We can point the finger at ourselves.
This piece was produced by a student reporter in the Madison365 Academy. To learn more or support our educational programs, visit Madison365.org/Academy.
