CLEVELAND — Wednesday, May 25th, 2022 marked two years since the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. And as we remember that loss, and the outrage spurred by his murder, the country continues to grapple with fresh pain in the wake of devastating mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas.
3News Contributor and spoken word artist Chris Webb reflects on the ongoing pain in the below poem, "Desperate Hearts."
Each couple months, a new news story comes that stops our country’s rhythm
I remember how George Floyd’s death sent a shockwave through my system
Set our hearts and minds ablaze and caused an uproar in our streets
And made our people take a stand to try and bring hate to it’s knees
And sadly yet, hate has increased, on subway cars, in grocery stores,
At church on Sunday, spaces where we go for peace turn into wars
Inside our school buildings, where elementaries turn into debates,
About our weapons, disturbed motives, public outrage, youth and race
Now these things move at rapid pace, Buffalo’s pain’s still freshly felt
And though that’s hard to process, now the cycle just reset itself,
It’s tough to learn the names because the list increases every week
The tears that fill our screens spill out and pool into collective grief
When I saw George Floyd’s video, it reminded me of Tamir,
Which reminded me of Travon, Mike Brown, and Philando Castile,
Bland, Garner, Taylor, names inside a tragic list so marred with pain
And last week, when I heard of Texas, Sandy hook came to my brain
Aurora, Colorado, columbine, the subway in New York
The Church in California, the Tops and those lives inside that store
And while these events aren’t conflated, each instance is vastly different
Still the common thread is life taken without thought in an instead
Yes, the common thread is mothers, sons, hearts that shoulda been safe
Unarmed and innocent, debated then discarded, then replayed.
It’s moments of silence, then public dialogue, and calls for Healing,
it shouldn’t be muscle memory that now I know that feeling.
Now our fears have become common, our dread and familiar strife
These days it makes me ask “are these events now just a part of life”
Is this something that we get used to, or something we fight to change?
Because if change is what we want we shouldn’t rest til it’s in range
If it’s needed the complication of these issues shouldn’t count
The laws, the hearts and minds, our families, we’d pursue every route
We’d find the personal responsibility in each community
To bridge the gaps that polarize us and block us from unity,
To watch for signs that drive the broken minds into extremes
To not be a society of enemies with dangerous means
It feels impossible, but our desperate hearts should at least begin
To work together to ensure we don’t mourn in this way again.
It feels impossible, but our desperate hearts should at least begin
To work together to ensure we don’t mourn in this way again.
More from Chris Webb:
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