If Death is Our Wake-up Call, We’ll Always be Too-Little-Too-Late
And hitting snooze is not an option
A US State government paper written five years post the unfortunate attacks of September 11, 2001 proudly details how the significant action that taken by the US in the war against terror after the attacks curbed terrorism and made the US and its allies considerably more secure.
A whole section contrasts the terrorism landscape before and today (with a 2006 frame of reference). One such example is below:
Before 9/11, Iraq was a designated state sponsor of terrorism, ruled by a tyrant, believed to hold weapons of mass destruction and was in violation of United Nations resolutions and sanctions. Today, Iraq is off the state sponsors list, governed by a duly elected representative government, and working to be fully integrated with the international community and a partner in the United Nations.
The paper also details how the future is going to hold more challenges and the steps taken to keep the world safer, both by the US and in collaboration with its allies and the United Nations.
But, terrorism was never a thing that was an overnight phenomenon, it’s just that it took an attack of massive scale on arguably the most powerful nation of the world, for it to spring into action, and take definitive measures.
Tamir Rice was shot and killed by white Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann in 2014. Rice, age 12, was playing with a pellet gun.
Laquan McDonald was gunned down by white Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke in 2014. In 2015, the police released the video showing Van Dyke firing 16 bullets into McDonald, many after the teen had crumpled to the ground.
Bettie Jones was struck by a bullet from Chicago officer Robert Rialmo, who was responding to a domestic dispute at a neighbor’s house that also left 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier dead in 2015.
Atatiana Jefferson was caring for her 8-year-old nephew in Oct. 2019 when white Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean shot and killed her through a back window of her home while responding to a call about an open front door.
George Floyd died on May 25 after Derek Chauvin, a white officer, pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck even as Floyd said he couldn’t breathe.
These are only 5 of 15 Black lives mentioned in this story that were lost to police brutality in the US over the past decade or so, and probably 15 of hundreds more that are not listed in this coverage by ABC News.
Breonna Taylor, one of the more known names from 2020 isn’t even on this list that I’ve included here.
Take a look at this interactive to see some more names and the stories behind these victims, if you have the stomach to read through these atrocities.
Yet, it took all these killings and more to truly trigger a Global Black Lives Matter movement. And yet, as of today, that has quieted down and we’re all back to our regular lives, while the brutality and discrimination continue in various parts of the world — a handful that makes the news, other thousands that don’t.
The case of a brutal gang rape and murder of a 23-yr old shook India on December 6, 2012 — and as a nation-wide storm brewed, let by the youth and the media, the victim was given the pseudonym “Nirbhaya” or “The Fearless”.
The case took a long time and a lot of media attention, outrage from the public and eventually had the 4 convicts executed on March 20, 2020.
Yet, this wasn’t the only case.
Despite this case, and since this case in 2012, India has reported between 30,000 to 40,000 rape cases. And mind you, these are the reported cases, where the actual number is probably in the millions — in a country where reporting a rape is often seen more as an embarrassment to the family of the victim than of the perpetrators.
This media story reports about 15 cases in the span of 25-30 days, and then probably got tired of reporting and stopped, although it promised to go on until the cases of brutality stop.
There were finally some changes to India’s Anti-Rape law that saw the light of day in 2018. While received with mixed reviews at least there was some action to acknowledge and address the inhumane incidents so rampant in the 2nd most populous nation of the world.
Every Action Has an Equal and Opposite Reaction
Does this mean we will continue to need extreme atrocities against humanity, for the powers that be, to take action to curb them?
And the onus doesn’t lie with the governments and states, but with all of us to act and act fast. Change begins with each one of us, and we don’t need to wait until it is too late to fix what should never have been broken in the first place.
Are we telling these extremists and radical parts of society that we need them to give us a wake-up call every now and then to restore a semblance of balance in the world? I don’t have the answer, but all evidence is clearly pointing towards it.