Stephon Clark, A Prisoner's Perspective

My heart bleeds for Stephon Clark, the young 22 year old Black Man who was shot at 20 times (hit 6 times in the back) and murdered by police in his grandmother's backyard only five feet away from her bedroom window. I am sick and tired of watching Black men get executed by law enforcement with absolutely no justice. Just look at Alton Sterling, where the officers murdered him with six shots to his chest while he was subdued on his back. The tragedy of losing another member of the Black nation is being relived by the Black community seemingly every week. The Blue on Black crime is an epidemic, and as a Black man vastly approaching my release from prison, the reality of legal lynching has never been more prevalent to me. When I look at how easy it is for overseers (officers) to just murder young Black men and not be prosecuted by the injustice system for it, it makes me reflect on how much more easy it must be for that same system to lock us up and throw away the key. Many Black youth struggle with the reality that by the time they are 21 they may either be in prison or they will be dead due to the social conditions that they are faced with, and until we truly eradicate the systemic racism which victimizes Black youth, we will proceed to bury young Black men under the earth and under prison sentences. - Hassan Shabazz

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