Let’s Get Free

Twenty years into the new millennium and nothing’s changed.

Photo by Randy Colas on Unsplash

Anger and humor are like the left and right arm, they complement each other. Anger empowers the poor to declare their uncompromising opposition to oppression and humor prevents them from being consumed by their fury.”
James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

It’s been twenty years since Dead Prez dropped their debut album Let’s Get Free and took aim at the police abuse that became all too rampant in the decade earlier.

Ironically enough, it has been 99 years since the brutal destruction of one of America’s wealthiest black enclaves. We know this event as the Tulsa Massacre. Now we find ourselves locked amid yet another racial rebellion in response to conditions that have yet to change.

Every year without fail the black delegation finds ourselves exposed to more trauma as another paid public servant murder someone they are apprehending and yet again we find the response to the incident insufficient. America has shown us over and over that there are many things that trump the life of black people: animals, property, and businesses, but not black men and women.

For us the lives of our comrades are everything. They are a permanent memento and a reminder of how this system rewards those unlucky enough to be caught up in…