Shem Walker, I wasn’t at the community meeting last night, but I am upset

I ran into Rev. Dyson this morning.  As I was walking past his church, he was taking down the fliers about last nights community meeting about the death of Shem Walker, the man who was shot on his front stoop by undercover cops disguised as drug dealers.  Reverend Dyson said the family was  at the meeting with Letitia James, our City Council representative and members of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care and representatives from local police precincts.  Mr. Walker’s daughters were there, one of them full military uniform.  She’s shipped out this morning for her second tour in Iraq.  It’s heartbreaking.

This man was trying to chase the drug dealers off his elderly mother’s front stoop.  He grew up in that house but he didn’t live there anymore.  He lived in Pennsylvania and returned to Brooklyn frequently to visit and help his mother.  

This man was killed in July.  The police officer who shot him in the chest at point blank range has not been identified.  The video from the survelance camera on the store across the street has dissappeared.

Apparently the police department and the DA have an agreement to cover up the deaths of innocent bystanders, like Shem Walker, when there aren’s many witnesses, as collateral damage, a necessary evil in the fight against crime.  The longer they can keep it quiet, the easier it will be to keep it covered up.

This is horrifying!

I’m getting really scared

I miss those days when the Republican would win again and we would shake our heads and be depressed for a while and then move on because it really was just politics and budgets.  Then Gore won the election but George Bush II ascended to the Oval Office and WTO happened, and 9/11 happened, and Enron happened, and Iraq happened, and Katrina happened…

…and the Mortgage Crisis happened, Hurricane Ike barely made the news as Wall Street happened, and now Sarah Palin encouraging the crazy angry people to get all riled up.

murakami

We made it to the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.  Success!  If we hadn’t gone today we would have missed it because it will close while we are in Montana.  I wanted to see it because I have clown reasons to relate to the cuteness and corporateness and scariness, the Japaneseness of his art.  A year after graduating from The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College (registered trademark) I found myself working as a clown and stiltwalker at Nagasaki Holland Village which can be compared to Main Street USA at Disneyworld, only it’s Dutch and in Japan.  I spent most of my time posing for pictures with Japanese schoolgirls who shouted “Kawaii” (“cute!”) and crowded around me holding up their hands in a peace sign and smiling for the camera.  At the time my clown wore overalls with a sash with a big bow at the back (“Nice obi.” commented one of the tech guys) and another bow in my orange clown hair.  I bore a striking resemblance to Hello Kitty.  On one of our days off we visited the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and Peace Park.  That same week George Bush The First ordered the bombing of Iraq.