We are living in a very scary time in America. Racial tensions are reaching its absolute boiling point, and it seems like every day there is a new story of a mass shooting or an unarmed black person getting shot (or anyone getting shot for that matter). In fact, the original topic of this article was to be about the Alton Sterling shooting, but since then, Philando Castile was killed by a Minnesota police officer while grabbing his wallet, five Dallas PD officers were killed by a vigilante sniper after a very effective and very police friendly #BlackLivesMatter protest, and black activist Deray McKesson was tackled and arrested by four officers while live-streaming the Baton Rouge protest on Periscope for seemingly no reason without being told his charges or even read his Miranda Rights. So to tackle one topic and ignore the others would be insanely disrespectful.

First thing I will cover is the tragic death of the five Dallas Police Officers killed on duty. The attack was by a man named Micah Johnson. It is reported that he solely targeted law enforcement, and even had plans to set bombs off. He did this in the midst of a peaceful protest in Dallas. Now this is the part where people seem to want to write their own rhetoric on Twitter to support whatever anti-BLM agenda they want. The gunman was completely independent of the protest, in the fact the police officers first action was to protect the innocent protesters from the crazed gunman. This man is a terrible man who took innocent lives. If anyone argues that then they are as delusional as he is. There are a lot of people wrong here and if you saw anything on Twitter on that fateful night, it was handled in extremely wrong ways. Some were, as I mentioned, pushing their own rhetoric and essentially blamed the entire thing on the #BlackLivesMatter movement and even resorted to calling them terrorists. There was many racist and many hurtful things said that made the people on that side disgusting bigots. Former Illinois representative Joe Walsh even said this tweet(which has since been deleted):

Walsh essentially sums up the terrible things said with a threat to Obama’s life and to anyone supports BLM’s life.

But on another side some were very apathetic to the killings, saying that it was ‘an eye or an eye.’ These are also wrong in my opinion. I think that the killing of an innocent person is wrong, in any capacity, badge or not. These officers were senselessly killed for no reason other than that they were officers of the law. While I stand by #BlackLivesMatter and always will, there were no reason for these people to die.

Now to the events that sparked all this, the first was of Alton Sterling, who was killed on the concrete in front of a store for no reason. A complaint was called by the store, and Baton rouge police came to see the situation to find that Alton Sterling was selling bootleg CDs. The police tackled Sterling to the ground and you hear an officer yell “gun!” then shots were put into Alton Sterling’s chest. There are many problems with this, first being that there was actually no sign of a gun. There are two videos with two angles of the shooting and neither seem to show Sterling with any kind of weaponry. The second is that even if he had a gun, there were many officers on top of him, so he wouldn’t have been able to shoot the officers anyway. The way that both videos show this killing makes it look like a murder. An execution.

The next day Diamond Reynolds, girlfriend of Philando Castile Facebook live streamed the shooting of her boyfriend to the world. They were stopped for an alleged busted tail light, the officer asked for Castile’s license. Castile did what you are supposed to do and informed the officer he had a registered gun and told him where it was and that he was going to his back pocket to get his wallet, but as he reached he was shot four times by the officer. The video is close to 10 minutes and is chilling. Castile died at the hospital, and you see Diamond Reynolds giving a prayer asking to not let God take him away- all while Reynold’s four-year-old daughter was there trying to comfort her. Then, to rub salt in the wound, the police kept her in custody until 5 a.m. and tried charging her even though there was nothing to charge her with. Another senseless death. Another execution.

The most recently black activist Deray McKesson was on Periscope showing the events of the Baton Rouge protests and then out of nowhere four police officers attack him, cuff him, and arrest him. All while not stating the charge or reading him his rights. They kept him in custody for close to 24 hours. Had it not been for the live streaming no one might not have known he was gone and no one would have been able to help him.

While I am Hispanic and cannot give an opinion on the experiences of being black, I can however give my experiences of being a person of color in America. Long story short: it’s hard. I feel as though the killing can’t and don’t stop at black people, and although the statistics are lower, I feel like I’m at risk. But even if I wasn’t, it is still wrong. It will always be wrong. No one deserves to be taken from this Earth for no reason. People will throw statistics they saw once on a Facebook post to argue with but it is fact that 566 unarmed black people were killed by a man in a uniform for their melanin and that they did not deserve that. Neither did those Dallas officers. But regardless, if you are black in America, do not give up hope, your life matters. Though many will say “Oh well #AllLivesMatter,” their people aren’t getting executed for their blackness. America will be safe for you and your children one day.