I don’t even know what words I want to write as my mind continues to try and conceptualize that THERE WAS A LYNCHING THE OTHER DAY! I scream here because I’m told it’s not appropriate to scream about this anywhere else at the moment. But still, I’m compelled to tell the story and here’s why. We have become a culture that only wants to deal with fun things. We only want the good times and laughs. We all want to vibrate higher and the thought of this happening brings us lower. I understand. I absolutely get it. I’m the quintessential fun girl when I want to be. We all love a good time. But. BUT. That doesn’t mean we can continue to ignore these heinous acts of inhumanity being perpetrated against us. I’m guaranteeing they are relying on us having a good time as to why this is so commonplace in 2019. I’ve heard about three lynchings in the past year alone and in my humble opinion, that’s three more than should have ever happened.

Danye Jones was the name of the last young man I heard about whom was found hanging from a tree in his mother’s backyard. Sadly and unbelievably, this is being investigated as a suicide, though from the way his body was found and details from the family that seems highly unlikely. His mother is a Ferguson activist, who’d been threatened and targeted prior to this happening to her son. Alarmingly, several other Ferguson protestors have met suspicious and untimely demises as well, since the Mike Brown case. And less surprisingly, there has been little to no media coverage. No activist groups have come to her support. No organization has offered her any protection. And as I learned about this, I, like she and many others I’m sure, are left to wonder, ‘where the hell is everybody?’ We don’t need groups looking for a photo op or a sound byte. We don’t need religious leaders calling for protection under the name of whoever they serve. We need real people. Standing up. Standing together. Saying enough of this shit! You are not going to take another one of us without it being a motherfucking problem!

So I tell his story as a reminder. As a precautionary tale to us all. We don’t have to wait for our child to be hanging or shot. When one of us is harmed, all of us are harmed. Her son is my son. My son is your son. Just as the African proverb says, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, it also takes a village to protect one.  Where’s our village?