From Within (Self Enhancement)
May 6, 2015

The killings of unarmed black men and other minorities at the hands of law enforcement has polarized our nation. I write this in support of all the peaceful protest going on throughout our country, and in effort to encourage my fellow African Americans to unite and focus on strengthening our communities, and ultimately ridding them of criminality.

I will like my readers to keep in mind, I am not a person speaking on a subject that I have not lived. I am from the inner city, South Central Los Angeles, CA. I have personally witnessed and been affected by police brutality. I grew up in these communities where minorities are treated like second or third class citizens. I also at one point ran with a gang that terrorized these communities. My community is no different from most inner city minority communities in America. So I am fully awear of the issues in our communities.

Before I continue, I must send my deepest regards to the families of all the men who lost their life to sense-less violence at the hands of law enforcement. I will also like to send my condolences to the families of the three New York City police officers who lost their life to senseless violence. Further, I send my condolences to all the families around the world who have been devastated by senseless violence. I strongly encourage and pray for peace in our world!

This has been very difficult to write, as I acknowledge there is a troubling trend of police officers murdering African Americans and other minorities, with no consequence! I also acknowledge there are several great police officers who's image has been tainted by these murderous acts committed by their colleagues. which makes this very difficult to write. However, the fact remains minorities are being murdered by police at a alarming rate, which is horrendously unacceptable. These murders have caused nation wide outrage. Most people blame these murders on a well established culture of racism in America. Some people blame high crime rates in inner cities and the mass murdering of African Americans by other African Americans, as a contributing factor, as to why these "shoot first, ask questions later" police officers patrol our communities. I see merit in both arguments. Me seeing merit in both argument has pissed off several of my friends. I guess because "I'm black", I must adopt this notion that it's solely racism. Let me by very clear, I know without any doubt, that racism continues to play a major role in how minority communities are governed. There is a system deliberately built to suppress the growth of minorities. (I.E. unemployment, poor schools, mass incarceration etc.) Africans have been wronged since we were force into this country. These are well established facts. However, I can also imagine a white police officer being afraid for his or her life when patrolling a area where people are murdered daily. This does not by any means give that police officer the right to murder a unarmed person! I'm just saying, I can see a scary police officers, wrongly murdering someone simply because he was scared and over reacted. Their humans! But their fear does not justify their actions! My point is, I can not just conclude every incident was racially motivated. Prime example, everybody assumed the officers in the Baltimore incident would be white men. But come to find out, there was three African American officers involved! So was this incident racially motivated? Who knows. So I will not sit here and try to speculate the motive of the police officers. My position is, trying to help prevent these types of incidents. Which is simple math! Less crime, less police, thus less chances of these incidents. We who live in these communities know why the police are there. Our own actions are a contributing factor as to why police are in our communities in large number in the first place. We need to be equally attentive and outraged at the high crime rates in our communities. These protest have galvanized the country and it appears we are being heard. My wish and hopes are for us to display this same energy when focusing on the wide spread, "black on black" violence, which is a daily occurance in our communities.

Mothers in our communities are burying their children weekly and most were murdered by other Africans. We are calling for justice and asking these police to leave our communities. However, we are giving them reason to stay. My readers from the inner city, I need you to be honest with your self. If the police force in your community decided to reduce their patrols by 80%, what will happen? "All hell would break loose." Speaking from how me and my crew would have reacted to knowing there would be less police. It would be "Let's rob this or that", "Let's go get them over there" etc. Now let's be honest, my crew is not the only inner city youths who would react this way. So my point is, at this time even if the police did leave our communities, "they'll by right back!" why? cause, Ray Ray and Keion is about to terrorize the hood, unsubdued, "no police, we on". Just keeping it real! So if we want them out, "let's prove it to our self!" How do we do that? By building our communities from within Let's get us together! We must stop murdering each other! We're the only ones who can decide to stop murdering each other, and slowly but surely create positive influences and programs in our communities. "We must ultimately turn our people away from criminality. Then when the crime is low, we can meritously say "get out of our communities, we don't need you here." No excuse to bother us. Further, once we clean it up, they can no longer point to crime infested black communities and say "O there animals, I feared for my life." We kill their meritless excuse. "Then when they come into our community and kill one of us, we can pour into the streets and say, "We are peaceful, why are you killing us". Ultimately, stronger communities give us "more power". We must build and strengthen our own community from within, everything else will follow!

The United States droped a atomic bomb on a much weaker Japan, but the Japanese did not dwell on the bombing. They continued to build from within and now the United States is in debt to Japan. Japan is a growing and thriving country. In order to "thrive" we must start from within!

Truly Yours
Perrie Thompson