We now have two more black men dead at the hands of the people who are supposed to protect and serve this country and its citizens.

Yet all we see in the news is the "devastating" breakup of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. We see the media criticizes the protesters in Charlotte, North Carolina for not protesting peacefully, yet when Colin Kaepernick abstained from standing for the national anthem everyone lost their minds and found it necessary to respond with heavy-handed, blind patriotism. Patriotism for a nation that was founded on the beliefs of justice, equality, and the ability for its citizens to speak out against issues facing the nation, but only consistently offers provides those rights to older, straight, cis-gender, white males.

This is by no means an epiphany for me or the rest of the nation's citizens who can honestly and objectively see the hypocrisy and inequality going on in this nation, but it is something that we MUST continue to talk about. So many severe problems in our country start out with a massive following, only to fall to a dull roar before extinguishing almost entirely in a matter of a few short weeks. Change can only happen if our outrage and cries of anguish continue to be heard. It is our responsibility to cry out and show that we refuse to stand to live in a country that will not protect ALL of its citizens or actively do something to fix the racism epidemic that still runs rampant throughout our country.

There are men who massacre innocent people and are removed from the scene ALIVE in handcuffs, whereas unarmed, innocent black men and CHILDREN are murdered by the police, because an officer saw them as a potential threat. White murderers are framed as "good kids" that no one expected anything bad from. Black men and children are framed as dangerous, potentially drug crazed, "thugs" regardless of whether or not that is the case. Even if the victims were on drugs or armed, they should not have been murdered, especially if a person of a different race would be able to walk out of the exact same situation alive, regardless of their mental state or whether or not they were armed. In the case of Keith Scott, one of the officers was more concerned about handcuffing him AFTER HE HAD ALREADY BEEN SHOT than giving him immediate medical attention.

People refuse to watch videos of these victims being murdered, because they are hard to watch, and that is exactly why these videos need to be seen. They are horribly disturbing, but they are real. They are the truth. They show the immense tragedy of the needless death of an innocent human being. They prevent these victims from becoming just another name or another statistic. Seeing a video of a person die at the hands of a police officer with no reasonable means for them to be shot, let alone killed, does not let you simply forget and move on with your life. These people had families and loved ones who may never see justice, like all too many other families of victims of police shootings.

Then for people to try to justify an officer's actions after the fact is an absolute disgrace. There is nothing in the American justice system that says that people should be sentenced to death under reasonable suspicion of drug use, violence, erratic behavior, or any of the other excuses that we always hear. Our justice system is supposed to stand by the tenant that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Murdering people because of a reasonable suspicion goes directly against this notion. People who are convicted must be convicted only if the jury finds them guilty beyond any reasonable doubt, yet innocent people are dying on the streets faster than families can bury their loved one, before there is yet another victim.

Every argument that is offered by those who refuse to find police officers at fault has a reasonable and logical counter or explanation. However a vast portion of the nation cannot be convinced by logical points that are only trying to prove that black people should not be murdered. Unfortunately, racism refuses to see logic. Therefore all we can do is keep fighting. Raise hell and let everyone know that we will not stand for a country that will not stand for ALL of us.