Aiyana was laying on the couch with her grandmother when the SWAT team threw a grenade into their apartment
Police were on the scene. Nowadays that’s never good. All the police do is shoot and kill unarmed African American people and the government is right there with the Mr. Clean to scrub all that blood away. But, what they can’t do is take away the memories you once shared, the bonds you’ve both created, and the pain you felt, that pain that continues on. Knowing that the person who attacked your loved one isn’t suffering or dead is the only thing that’s on your mind as soon as the smoke clears. But, you have to settle. You always have to settle.
You have to settle for jail time instead. You have to do a lot of things that you don’t want to do. You have to calm down they say, everything is going to be okay they say. How?? Are you going to bring back my baby? Are you going to bring Aiyana Jones, Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Ramarley Graham, Sean Bell or Trayvon Martin and the thousands of others that may not be mentioned on social media or the news? Are you going to put all those tax paying dollars to good use and build a machine that can bring back my baby? Are you gonna hire better cops who don’t get so trigger happy round black folk? Or are we back where we used to be? Have we gone anywhere? You’d be fooled if you thought that this new millennium and technology changed anything from the way it was before.We went from being hanged by our government to being shot by them. We went from nothing to the mirage of having something, which may sound good but, how is it? How do you grow if you don’t know how far down you really are? We think we’re moving, growing, branching out but when it all comes down to it you’re putting your heart, your left foot, your Michael Kors bag on the line and in return you get no respect, no acknowledgement, no spotlight, no cake plus your people are getting shot at and killed by the people you’d trust to come and help you if you were hurt or robbed or white.
Aiyana means forever blooming and always blossoming in one of the Native American languages. For Joseph Weekley, to pull the trigger on Aiyana is like shooting a budding flower. How could you shoot a budding flower? Something that’s going to turn into something so beautiful, so breathtaking. How could you clip a butterfly’s wings like so? How could you? As I was reading the story of Aiyana I realized something. I realized that her parents, her grandmother, and all her other family members are going to remember Aiyana as a beautiful young budding flower, something so pure, elegant and just awesome, but Joseph Weekley will never see that. He’ll never get the opportunity to imagine Aiyana Stanley-Jones. Whether he’s in jail or not he’ll always have to live with those bloody hands that pulled the trigger. He never can erase those thoughts and images that run through his mind night or day, day or night. He’ll have nightmares that will haunt him forever. Whenever he’s having a good time, just remember Aiyana could’ve been having a good time too. But, he clipped the butterfly’s wings. To think that it has been five years since Aiyana’s murder means that Aiyana Stanley-Jones would be 13 years old now and in junior high school.
“She was only a baby,” said her grandmother Mertilla Jones. Yes, she was only a baby. This baby could’ve done whatever she wanted to do when she grew up. It was only 12:45 am, 12:45 am and the SWAT team had all day to plan their entrance into the “right” apartment. But, you know they thought they were doing some “great police work” in taking a criminal off the streets but in turn they were allowing a crime to happen. A crime that could’ve been avoided had they taken notice that they entered the home of a sleeping child who had nothing to do with whatever was going on (they had entered the wrong apartment). She had nothing against you, she was only a baby. Only an innocent little girl. Aiyana was laying on the couch with her grandmother when the SWAT team threw a grenade into their apartment. That same grenade caused Aiyana’s blanket to catch fire. It’s so confusing as to how the police could see this weary little girl who woke up so abruptly from her sleep and stay there long enough for her to be fatally shot.
We have less than a month till #RiseUpOctober National March to STOP police terror Oct 24 in NYC.It’s been a year since Ferguson, and the police are STILL getting away with murder! Three people a day. And all the racist propaganda to justify it — the “courageous” police “feared for their life” because of the “threatening” (unarmed) Black youth. Enough is enough! Which side are you on? Let’s get organized to make Oct 24 the most powerful protest against police terror this country has ever seen. Let’s flood the streets of NYC, before the eyes of the world and put the murdering police and this whole damn system on the defensive.
In order for this year to be a successful #RiseUpOctober National March we really need donations to help bring the families of the victims of police brutality to our march so that their stories and pain can bring us stronger together, forming a stronger resistance against the system. Only with your help can we bring Aiyana’s family from Detroit to New York City. So help us to change the way our messed up system views our youth and our people!