I am preparing for a class on environmental racism when I see the headline
“a 16-year-old boy has been murdered by the Honolulu police department”
That’s what I see, but we know that’s not what it reads.
The police and mainstream media will first call this child a man.
Call this murder a “police involved shooting”.
Will call this “incident” an inevitability
chief Ballard will say,
We have no further information as the officers involved are “consulting with their lawyers”
“They have been put on a four-day administrative leave”
That is the “normal policy”
Ballard will admit That there were no weapons found at the scene
While she hints that maybe one of the 14 or 16-year-old boys (she says men) tossed them
And now the whole internet is engaged in a public debate about whether or not a child deserved to die
And I am weeping, in awe of the magic of this misdirection
We are having all the wrong conversations
I am preparing for a class on environmental injustice
Where we will discuss that the most accurate predictor to environmental harm is race
The ordinary topics in this kind of conversation are about toxins, improper waste disposal, and water contamination
But I think about how our hunger, lack of shelter and healthcare – along with the obscene presence of police SERVAILENCE must be a part of this environmental equation
The math that leads only to our displacement and death
KITV lets out a hint
3 of the 6 boys were unsheltered (they say homeless)
Facebook comments will call these children guilty of a lack of worth ethic
“they should have been in school, better yet, had jobs”
Even from our own lāhui, calling out bastardizations of hawaiian values without context
“hewa nō, make”
The worst of us will debate “choice” from our moral high ground
our bellies bloated with privilege
I get caught in the black hole of Facebook comments
But I cant stop wondering how long it might have been since any of these boys have felt safe, full, protected
I think
How terrifying it must have been
These kids
Younger than the age of my baby sister
The full force of the honolulu police department in pursuit
And firing
To me
This fear is so human
And so I see their faces before a single picture has been released
I know these ʻōpio- they are not strangers to me
And so of course when the news drops I wait for the revelation of what we already know
The faces of these boys will look like ours
and if we have resisted the forgetting
Paid attention to the carving of our ocean into digestible, colonizable, categories
They will be familial
Sons of our ocean
Our moananui
The only blue that with ever be worthy of our backing
If we hold thse genealogies as sacred
As self evident
They will remind us
Of us
And so for just a moment
the 16-year-old chuukeese boy, named iremamber
Who was murdered by the Honolulu police will be our
Child
brother
family
comrad
Someone who’s life might matter far beyond the sum of mistakes made under the weight of a society that has already marked him as unworthy
His brother says,
“the police hate micronesians for doing what we do... surviving”
And I think,
I know that feeling
Of being a target for elimanation
A nusence in the neoliberal promise of progress
living under the crushing weight of a failing state
I said it before
We are having all the wrong conversations
We are examining all the wrong “facts”
We are engaged in a debate that promises only to strip us of what little is left of our collective humanity
While a 16 year old boy, born of our moana lays dead
So instead
Maybe we could take a moment to pay attention
To mourn
To aceept our culpability
And do anything other than cower, paralized
Watch the way the police will position the murder of a boy as inevitable
Watch the way our lives and the lives of ones we love have become disposable.
Watch the state pivot away from the root cause of crime—use this as a justification for more force against us
Watch the ways the state will justify all this violence
While calling itself protection
We must know now
More than. Ever that we much Watch out for eachother – becasue we are our only defense
We are our only chance of survival
