#Thread:I heard a speech last night from #MarchOnWashington that got me thinking about a #BLM convo I had w/ my 22 yo son last month. He said something that really struck me, something that was insightful. I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like this:

"Growing up, I remember hearing about #TrayvonMartin and #TamirRice, but I just assumed people fixed everything and it wasn’t a problem anymore. Now that I’m older and paying attention, I see things haven’t changed at all." #BLM #Protests

This summarizes why young people are protesting. They’ve grown up with it and they’re tired of it. Even older folks who marched for #CivilRights see the commonality of police brutality with past lynching and their own experiences while marching in the 60s. They, too, are fed up.

For me, I was a HS senior when #RodneyKing was beaten in LA. I was in Cincinnati for grad school when police killed four Black men within just as many months. Both cities erupted in #protests. Looking back, I don’t feel like much has changed either.

When I "thread that needle" among 20th century lynchings, Baby Boomer experiences during #CivilRights #protests, LA and Cincinnati protests in the 90s and early 2000s, and #GenZ #BLM protests in the late 2000s and early 2010s, it's clear not much has changed #PoliceBrutality

For Emmitt Till, whose death sparked the Civil Rights movement, his murderers had de facto qualified immunity. In fact, Carolyn Bryant Donham, his accuser, is alive and free today. Police now have state sanctioned. #QualifiedImmunity.

#QualifiedImmunity is a #SCOTUS invented doctrine arising from the Civil Rights movement when police arrested pastors for “disrupting the peace” (i.e., using a segregated bus terminal waiting room) in 1967. #BLM

The long and short of this #thread: There is a better way and it falls upon all of us to do our part. One #POTUS or even a series of presidents cannot fix it. 400 years of racial violence is too long. We should strive to reconcile and lift each other up. #BLMprotest

BTW, this is the video of #JacobBlake's sister speaking at the #MarchOnWashington, which triggered this entire thread: