When You Watched TV: May 29, 2020 in Salt Lake City

When you watched TV, what did you see Saturday, May 29, 2020 in downtown Salt Lake City? You saw people lumped into categories like rioters, protesters and demonstrators. You saw people with t-shirts draped around their foreheads, necks and mouths--like they were Mujahideen of the modern era, according to one reporter. Not far from their vantage points were rows of jackbooted police officers in head to toe body armor holding shields, aligned to prevent further damage to area businesses and institutions as everything was tagged around them--buildings, bikes, cars, sidewalks. 

Reporters from local stations murmured things under their breaths admonishing each and every fiery live action from these masked people, which caused a reaction not just from the reporters themselves but from the throngs of people remonstrating among clouds of thick, black smoke and cheers. Wearing cloaks made from the native flags of their countries: Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala among the many represented. Latinos for BLM, said one poster. United for BLM, read another. Justice 4 Bernardo, yet another. 

When you watched TV, you saw these masked people in their full-throatedness, screaming at the tops of their lungs at those police officers who stood there behind face shields who were within spitting distance of a few thousand cases of potential Coronavirus during a pandemic. Some of these masked people--for the sake of identification--even took their masks off and yelled, their spittle flying every which way, just to get their points across as much as the spray cans they were holding in their school backpacks. 

These officers said and did nothing to the delight of their police chief while these masked people invoked and sprayed phrases like "F*** 12," and "No justice, no peace!" and "George Floyd," between sentences and all over the place, knowing full well that their words were meant to get at and tear at, the very foundations of those officers to whom they were screaming. Standing alongside were Polynesians, blacks and even whites--mostly kids who don't get all this division noise anyhow and who are classmates and teammates trying to figure out a complicated mess. 

When you watched TV, while you were so far removed from the scene that you pointed your fingers at these masked people as though they were subhuman I can tell you they weren't. These were kids who years ago wore matching navy blue cotton vests over white dress shirts and red, white and blue neckties, bearing proudly their full names on white nametags; who sang the "Star-Spangled Banner" during weekly pride assemblies and who were good kids who were "builders" who excelled at school so often they walked up in their khaki pants and dress shoes to collect quarterly awards for academic prowess. 

They later learned American history from a man who taught in Oakland's worst high schools and who received countless awards for his meritorious service not just to that community but in this community as well. He dropped verse after verse after verse about their lives on a down beat, a ponytailed, grayhaired white man Messiah MC meticulous in his preparation and tough in his love who could relate, urging these kids not to go down that same path he did to juvenile detention but to a far better place. They high-fived each other in hallways, smiling as they passed--to the next grueling class. 

When you watched TV, they were living a nightmare all over again because they'd already seen it replay a thousand times these past 94 days, these children of hard-working, religious immigrant parents who came here with nothing more than bags full of things and a hope that they too could achieve that American dream--which for these kids is now in danger of perishing entirely like those groceries. 

They weren't seeing any high-fives from messiahs nor meticulous high standards of leadership,not from their souped-up European cars along a lonely stretch of road in downtown Salt Lake City on a hot, mid-afternoon Saturday in May, and they sure weren't stupid enough to buy into the idea that one long caravan of cars would fix 94 days of agony and a lifetime of pain. The idea that these kids could have such a dream has been replaced by long hours working in the hot sun laying concrete, or roofing or doing construction--"Yo, f*** that college sh** now coach," one former student said; "my mom is sick I gotta make her better." What she's sick from is no surprise; it's the same afflicting many disproportionately as we speak. 

When you watched TV, these so-called rioters took an unpaid day off to send a loud message filled with this Covid-19 venom to any officer who would listen, by any means necessary. But, to them, in their cars, nobody was listening. And here, standing in this melee, nobody was listening. Because you see, they're tired from working 14 hours a day, six days a week and they don't want to end up like their parents. So they ain't gonna be scared of some hollow threat of Juvie, or jail or even prison like was threatened 58 times through megaphones because with all the sh** going on, they don't see there will be a tomorrow anyway. They expected an arm around their neck or maybe even a high five and a drink as they all walked down the street together with the police, talking about life today in Salt Lake City, Utah--like that sheriff in Flint, Michigan--instead they got stares and glares. 

They'll work tomorrow though, they added, because they have to eat. But their friend was murdered in broad daylight at a city park not too long ago, and their other friend was too, and their other, and so on and so on and so on til they're tired. So this message is just a one-time thing they be saying Saturday but don't get it twisted; that sh** will never go away. They wore the memorial T-shirt here to prove it and it's draped around their neck like a badge of honor they'd rather not have to wear in the first place. What has been seen is this is a cascading series of unheard-of sounds of agony directed toward anyone within distance--for riots are the voices of the unheard and ain't nobody listening. 

When you watched TV, did you f***ing hear what they were saying through all the f***s or were you too busy paying attention to all these f***s and tuned it out like the rest of the stations did, because the noise was too f***ing loud? Did the exhaust of their souped-up mufflers drown out your innermost thoughts on camera, as you heard them speeding away from the scene of the supposed crimes they committed as soon as National Guard troops showed up in unmarked cars bearing semi-automatics toward kids who said what they needed and gotta get up early and provide for their families? 

Or, did it surprise you when 39 were rounded up into a corner on 200 East after some of them even dared stay, and they put their hands up--as they have been taught to do--and were placed in zip ties and shipped off to holding cells for the night and cited for disorderly conduct? Their parents will have you know they still have work in the morning, however, they had a duty as Americans to exercise their rights to free speech which is something they were told they should cherish from the time their parents placed them in a charter school "For New Americans," promising all who entered in grade school this American way and a legitimate shot at COLLEGE--if they learned to play this American game right. 

When you watched TV, I bet you didn't know that the charter school that many of these so-called rioters attended was actually financed by current US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. That when most of these kids first came to America they were required to take hours upon hours of English as a Second Language classes from a blonde, bubbly farm girl from Minnesota who wore her heart on her sleeve, while her screeches of "Good job! Good Job!" and clap-claps were heard 200 yards down a long, winding hallway. 

As she repeated and repeated and repeated these studied cadences that would later permeate the conversations attempted between the masked people and officers--years after they went home and studied for hours and hours this language because that's what it took--your silence wouldn't faze them as they bleated. Normally, a one-sided conversation wouldn't suffice for anyone who had already been through battles sitting in learning position in classrooms, enduring battles with hunger and abject poverty at home, and later handling fear outside their own homes every time they got pulled over--but they were the only ones who spoke perfect English in their homes for the most part, so nope; this non-reaction from any police officer wouldn't taze them. 

When you watched TV, they would keep going and going and going and going and going for as long as they could--hours and hours and hours like their ESL teacher did, pounding that f**king cadence into their brains until they decoded this life via direct instruction and mastered the intricate sequences and unlocked the key to success in America. 

They would do this day after day after day, until it was time to go home and take care of their non-speaking family who was also learning English at night, two days a week at school while their kids also went to night school because it was offered as a public service and included a meal, for which they were and are eternally grateful. 

When you watched TV, did you look beyond any of what you were seeing, all these "blacks and browns" wearing masks and this and that? No, you watched one white guy walk up with a machete and a bow and arrow and wonder why he aimed it at these kids and why a police car was set on fire and why some graffiti and broken windows happened--because "we're better than that," said the governor. But, that one bow and arrow guy was the one who got all the TV time, telling the reporter how he was wronged because it was his car in flames despite the fact he knew all along what he was shooting at. 

But, nobody else got a single, solitary minute to tell their American success stories on live TV, because they happened to use F-bombs out of frustration and that wouldn't play well with that TV audience. Despite the fact that until age 18 they played by our rules, they did what they were told and yet despite all that, they're still showing up to this demonstration getting no f***ing answers. They're grieving the same injustices they learned about from their award winning teachers while they're caked in the same dirt as their parents, wearing the same farmers tans on arms toned by hard work in these pictures as their disease-addled family. There stood the same guy I couldn't help but notice in a picture in the newspaper who was once our student body officer and three-sport star athlete who was clearly still grieving the loss of his best friend who died from a police bullet--now lumped into the category of a rioter, screaming out in agony who in the words of one reporter, should just calm down.