I know every article this week will consist of one of two topics: "Pokémon Go’s" release and how there are more cars pulling over in the road to catch wild Pidgys or the Dallas shooting.

Now, I’ve said enough about Pokémon, maybe I should add how they need to fix the servers because I am tired of waiting to be able to play. Instead I will talk about what has happened over the past week.

As I am writing this piece, I am listening to the governor of Texas speak. He mentions "A Tale of Two Cities"— the courage of the officers, and the cowardness of the shooter. I feel the statement is only half right. The police officers were making sure that the citizens of Dallas were able to exercise their right to protest, even though the protest was about how police officers are treating Black Americans in our country. The officers were not expecting a sniper to be targeting them during the peaceful protest. No one expected it, except the gunman. Where Gov. Greg Abbott was wrong is when he called the shooter, Micah Johnson, a coward. A coward doesn’t plan an attack of officers who are armed with weapons of their own. A coward doesn’t get himself killed by not negotiating with the police. A coward doesn’t serve in our military, even if it was in the reserves. Micah Johnson was angry, fed up with the police brutality in this country. Was that justifiable for his actions? Some will say yes. When you see what has happened in our country with the police and the black community, you begin to wonder what are these peaceful protest, overseen by the people that are being protested, doing?

How many times do hundreds or thousands of people need to line the streets and block traffic before some real change starts happening? The change that I am talking about is to decrease spending in wealthy communities and start helping our poorer communities. The change that I am talking about is when black people are not more likely to be pulled over, searched or shot by police officers. The change that I am talking about is when the officers that commit these crimes are put on administrative leave but yet people with outstanding speeding tickets can have a warrant for their arrest. However, I do strongly believe that no innocent life should be taken. The officers targeted in Dallas were there doing their jobs. They weren’t causing problems and did not need their lives put in jeopardy. Only God has the power to take a life. Not Micah Johnson, not Blane Salamoni or Howie Lake II, and not Jeronimo Yanez.

Now what sticks out to me is one of these men are dead while the other three are getting paid while on leave. Micah Johnson was killed by a police robot. The three officers named have been put on administrative leave with further investigations and trials to come. Why wasn’t Micah Johnson suppressed by a police robot and taken to jail with an investigation and pending trails to come? Micah Johnson did not deserve to ever walk the streets as a free man and the world may be better off without him, but couldn’t we say the same thing about George Zimmerman? Yet, he walks free and every so often gets back in the news about something he said or did. I guess that is how our justice department works. Speaking of our justice department, everyone has heard the phrase "click it or ticket," but that has seemed to go out the window when Freddie Gray broke his neck after being handcuffed together but not put in a seat belt by the very people who enforce this law, yet none of them to date have been convicted of any wrongdoing. Judge Barry G. Williams acquitted Officer Edward M. Nero because “there was insufficient evidence to show that his failure to place a seatbelt on Mr. Gray created serious risk to Mr. Gray’s life and led to his death.” A crime I would very well be pulled over and ticketed for by those very same officers. To get back on track, what happened in Dallas could be the tragic start to a long line of things to come.

I pray that our country can come together and realize that black lives really do matter. It’s not all lives that are being choked to death in the street. It’s not all lives that are riding in the back of a police van and end up with a broken neck. It’s not all lives that are living in poverty, going to underfunded schools, supporting full families off of minimum wage jobs because they are unqualified or have no access to the area when the jobs are placed in areas where reliable vehicles are mandatory. And it’s definitely not all lives that are populating the American jail system. The Black Lives Matter movement is not excluding anyone or saying that blacks deserve more rights than the next race, it is simply saying that our lives matter, too! We don’t want special treatment, we want equal treatment. We don’t want to hear about some mental illness a white shooter has, but how a man who served our country in Iraq, never had a criminal record and has been a law abiding citizen up he got fed up and thought he was justified in shooting 12 people, killing five, a terrorist. Micah Johnson was known as a good person but got fed up and did something unforgivable. We are definitely better without someone who was capable of such evil in this world. I am pro #BlackLivesMatter but I am also pro #StopTheFuckingSenselessKilling and #NoLifeIsGreaterThanTheOther. Thank you for reading my very unorganized rant on what has happened this past week. Just to lighten everything up, I caught a Weedle at the beginning of this article! "Pokémon Go" is what our generation has been waiting for since "Ruby" and "Sapphire."