Black people in general have anxiety around law enforcement. But when you’re dark-skinned, Clarissa Brooks writes, it seems to give them a full pass to disrespect you
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I’m a community organizer. I was one of the nine students who protested Hillary Clinton in 2015. That is the kind of direct action and protest I have been organizing around police brutality, sexual violence and gentrification for the past four years, since in my sophomore year at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.
My work often involves protesting politicians or rallying near government buildings, which means I am often around cops. Lines of them, just for surveillance, usually. Many times, I don’t really care that they’re there and vice versa. Especially at marches, they are mostly neutral. Other times, their presence injects more anxiety into an already tense situation. Sometimes, the situation gets especially hot, like when we interrupted that Clinton speech. A federal agent yelled at me: “If you don’t let go of this barricade, I’ll body slam you!” I know I will always have to encounter them – it’s just part of doing the work I do.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2P2EvO2
