Deserving vs un-deserving Dead
All of the killings of all of our children must stop
The screams of a thousand dead children wail through my mind. Children in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Libya killed by empires drones, thousands of young men of color living in Amerikkka killed by wite supremacist occupying armies called Police, Security guards and neighborhood watch agents, teenage workers from Bangladesh and China killed by corporations for profits, countless babies and young people killed by drive-by shootings and gun violence in communities of color intentionally ghettoized, destroyed and preyed upon by devil-opers, bank gangsters, gentriFUKators , and hundreds of wite, middle-class children, youth and adults killed by more gun violence perpetration, mental illness and the mental vacancy of wite culture.
Thousands of children die for corporate profits, war profits and prison industrial profits every year in Amerikkka. Dead because gun violence is glorified and the sale of guns make some people rich, because parents are tired and don’t have the energy to fight with their kids to turn off the video games, because video games, un-conscious rap, Hollywood movies and corporate news with people killing each other make death look like entertainment and with each sale make more profits for tech corporations in Silicon Valley run by the new technological colonizers. Because guns are exciting, especially when you have little else to be excited about.
So shouldn’t the grief for all of our children be the same? Our actions to stop the rise in death by gun violence everywhere be equally urgent and comprehensive? So why does the president of the United Snakkes of Amerikkka shed crafted tears and a prime-time speech for the 25 wite middle-class children from Connecticut. Why does he publicly become a “father’ when it comes to them? What about crying for babies killed by drive-by shooters, youth killed by police and hundreds of teenage workers from China who react to mercury poison and throw themselves out the window while Macintosh makes billions in profit. Why aren’t thousands of people shedding tears and sorrow and sympathy for the children in Gaza who die everyday?
In the bizarre naming of poverty positions there is a terrifying concept called the deserving vs undeserving poor rooted in the US crums (welfare) policies that were originally set-up for white widows of World War II veterans in the 1930’s and 40’s. Due to overt and systemic wite supremacist institutional values that undergird everything in the US from its stolen beginnings to now, these white, hetero-normative women were viewed as the deserving poor or “legitimate” poor people who had come upon bad times from no “fault” of their own and therefore were deserving of our aid and our sympathy. In contrast, indigenous sisters, sisters of color in diaspora or wite ,divorced, poor or unmarried women were viewed as aberrant, pathological or “lazy”, who had inherently done something to “deserve” their poverty and therefore deserved none of the US crums, only criminalization, incarceration or disgust.
I think we have come to a time in herstory, with the meteoric rise in death by gun violence of so many of us of all ages, colors, cultures and regions of Amerikkka, where we now have the deserving vs undeserving dead. How is it that somewhere in so many peoples hearts they believe that the victims in Connecticut were innocent and therefore not deserving of their death where somehow little baby Hiram, 1 year old, because he happened to be in the line of fire from a passing car in Oakland, any less innocent. Or Ayana Jones, a 7 year young innocent baby shot when Detroit po’lice stormed their home with assault rifles to “find a suspect” or Derrik Gaines, a young disabled man who was killed by Daly City po’lice for walking while black in a wanna be wite suburb in California, “deserved” his shooting or the countless children killed in Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq or Libya by colonizing empire armies attempting to steal more indigenous resources for the ever-hungry jaws of capitalism, deserved to die because someone calls their innocent bodies “collateral damage”.
Do all of our poor children of color sorted, separated, tested and arrested out of Amerikkkan skools who roam the streets with no jobs, no hope and endless violent images pumped into their heads from kkkorporate media lies and mythologies in the holding tanks called our ghettoized neighborhoods, pick up guns and shoot each other for something to do until the po’lice arrive to place them into the plantation prisons that await their profitable arrival deserve to die?.
Because Macintosh and Slave-mart has more billions to make off the Amerikkkan killing ekkkonomy and so there must be poor workers in the global south dying to make their i-producks and their bargain-priced jeans, does that make these workers “deserving” of their death?.
Because the poor, indigenous, landless, spirited peoples of color must continue to be oppressed or the wite-supremacist capitalist system wont continue to make profits, so does that make our death in their plantation prisons deserving?
There are many reasons why these wite children and adults are killing each other. My Black Indian Mama Dee used to say, wite supremacy and capitalism isn't good for any human, even wite people. People have talked about the proliferation and glorification of guns to all young people through mass media, as well as the deep wounds of the cult of independence on a human's psyche, not to mention the gutting by republicrats of the mental health system. But one of the deepest ones that I see is the factory schools themselves, the separation of youth from elders wisdom and the ways that our children no longer even vaguely understand the respecting, honoring and necessary reverence of their elders. How in this society we are taught the opposite. We are taught how to ghetto-ize and separate our elders from our children in as many ways as possible. this separation and lack of reverence is valued in capitalism as it sets up more products and capital to trade on.
This mama prays and send so much love and strength to all of these families who have lost their babies and now to these Connecticut families and little ancestors to help their still living families decolonize from this myth of separation and capital-inspired death so their may be healing for them.
From this moment and so many more like it, I am drawn to believe that when people like me and my mixed race family in poverty die, we deserve to. My hope and vision is that with this moment of so much sorrow for the families in Connecticut, perhaps the resources and power of these middle-class wite people will make a difference in the ridiculous proliferation of deadly weapons in all of our communities and perhaps the oddly democratizing impact of death will free us all from the unspoken but clearly existent concept that some of us deserve to die and awaken us all to the real-ness that none of us do.
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