Don't Say My Name

I don’t want you to say my name. I don’t even want you to know who I am. I don’t want you to recognize my face, or hear from my friends. I don’t want you to protest in the streets, loot shit that doesn’t belong to you, fight the cops, or get arrested trying to make a point and defend anyone - and everyone - just like me. 

Don’t say my name. 

I don’t want my mother forced to go on camera, at a press conference, after I’ve been shot and killed.  I don’t want my spouse to relive my tortured screams captured on the body cam of the man or woman or veteran or rookie or partner or trainer who killed me stemming from a knee-jerk reaction or what they were ‘trained’ to do.  I don’t want my face dragged across any news channel or website or magazine or newspaper or political fundraiser. I don’t want the president to stand before a podium and lament the fact that I was taken far too soon, and that it will be his or her mission to see that I’m the last one cut down in the prime of his life. 

Don’t say my fucking name. 

I don’t want my friends to tell reporters or newscasters what a great guy I was.  I don’t want people questioned about whether or not I goddamed complied or sat respectfully or had a legal right to own a firearm or shouldn’t have been walking or running or playing somewhere I ‘shouldn’t have been’ or that I fit a motherfuckcing description or I seemed suspicious because of your upbringing or biases that you feel but only acknowledge when you think you’re threatened. 

Don’t fucking say my name. 

I don’t want to know that my child - minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and years after I was killed - has to live that day over and over again until therapy or time or self-medicating or anger or the fact that he can’t escape his own thoughts cripples him and his ability to flourish and become someone magnificent and world-changing.  I don’t want my family to have anything to do with the civil rights attorney of the moment, spewing platitudes and niceties. I don’t want to hear conservatives or Second Amendment advocates or any asshole who automatically victims shames and blames.  I don’t want my wife to endure a trial or sound bites on the steps of a courthouse knowing that my killer is protected by the kind of immunity which lets them violate the next person with an impunity more dangerous and oppressive than the good ones can imagine or defend or stop or mitigate or eradicate. 

Don’t say my fucking name. 

I don’t want to turn on the TV or fire up my news apps to read that I’m one person closer to being unjustly harassed or assaulted or murdered.  Because every day I AM just one person closer.  To being harassed.  To being assaulted.  To being murdered.  To never being in your life. Or in my child’s life. Or in my family’s life.  That’s probably not the kind of daily scrutiny you’ve contemplated.  You’re probably not in a position to comprehend looking over your shoulder every time you aren’t in your own home - and sometimes even when you are.  You don’t know what it feels like to be paralyzed in this society that is never going to be post-racial.  I don’t want you to know who I am.  

Don’t say my name.  

Better training.  Better pre-employment vetting.  Better ability to deploy the right resources to the right problem.  Better protection against unions.  Better communication skills and de-escalation skills.  Better identification and punishment of bad cops.  Better and more support for cops who are doing the right thing and truly benefitting their communities and are freed from whatever interdepartmental bullshit keeps them silent and hidden and protects the shitbags who give them all a bad name.  Better whatever it takes to bring this to a stop.  Better I don’t care.  

Tomorrow is a new day.  It doesn’t have to be my last.  I hope it isn’t.  

Fix this. 

Don’t say my name.