I often get a little down as I see so many people in this country insist that the authority of the police/government be worshiped while the value of a human life is reduced to their ability to comply with that authority.
Seeing these beautiful NBA players refuse to play is a sign of solidarity that I viscerally feel. While I may do a lot on my keyboard to show how I feel, I have never done anything that could do damage to my career.
As the cost of having beliefs gets higher, I am inspired to see people paying it. It's difficult to say who will win the war over the value of a black person's life, but the one thing the enemies of black lives don't have are meaningful beliefs: theirs is the twisted drunkenness that comes when the only language you speak is that of dominance and power.
To them, a criminal record means that we should be less upset when the government murders them. It means that the person to blame for the ending of a life isn't the man with the gun but the unarmed man who doesn't share their loyalty to authority. They pretend to believe that government violence has less significance than random criminal violence, especially if that criminal violence was committed by a black man. They will say literally anything they have in order to spare the reputation of their precious government.
Their argument has the weight of centuries of oppression, power, and trillions of government dollars. It is daunting but I still have a lot of hope.