if you don’t see

I’m well satisfied with the opening paragraph of my review of tonight’s American Horror Story: Roanoke.

text: “For the entire run of American Horror Story: Roanoke, I’ve pointed out its fictionalized images of real horrors visited upon black Americans, some for centuries and some more recent. And for the entire run of the installment, some readers have told me I’m imagining a significance that isn’t present in the show. In ‘Chapter 9,’ where a police officer asks a screaming black woman if she’s survived ‘a lynch mob,’ and where much of the footage comes from police body cams, if you don’t see that underlying theme, it’s because you’re determined not to see it.”

I’ll be donating my payment for tonight’s review to The ACLU, because we woke up to a true American nightmare, and I’ll do what I can to make it easier and make it end.

day-one plan

The day after police killed Alton Sterling, Hillary Clinton’s Twitter stream looked like this:

Eventually, her social-media team issued one platitude acknowledging Sterling’s killing at police hands. After Philandro Castile’s killing by the police, she doubled down on sympathetic words. But leaders do more than speak in platitudes; they make plans. And they fight for them.

Hillary Clinton has a plan for criminal justice reform. Why isn’t she shouting it from the rooftops? Why is she offering empty words of condolence and talking about the continuing police killings as if they’re a predestined (and therefore unavoidable) “tragedy”?

Leaders don’t just offer thoughts and prayers. Leaders lead. Tell Hillary Clinton that she needs to speak up, speak out, and speak LOUDLY about a day-one plan to curb police violence, ensure civilian oversight, and stop this ongoing assault on black people in the United States.