oakland

i have been focused on school work for the past 15 or so days and therefore i haven’t watched or read any news. when i’ve watched video on t.v. or computer my whole goal has been to zone out rather than be informed. so i didn’t know anything about what is going on in oakland until i saw some photos on brad’s blog and then saw a tweet from mc hammer (yes i follow mc hammer on twitter – do you have a problem with that?). so i decided to see a little of what is happening in the world. i finally saw the video of the police shooting oscar grant and i can’t see anyway that this will be a justifiable shooting. what in the world was this guy thinking? i don’t know a lot about what is going on and has happened. i’ve had my nose stuck in books about a world that existed 2,600 years ago, which ironically bares a great deal of similarity with what is happening within our present day. still with my limited understanding of the events i can understand the desire of some to riot though i would add that they are probably not helping to correct the problem at all. their violent response is more than likely just making the problem worse. that type of violence, even in response to awful violence, merely continues the circle and encourages more brutality.

so in my ignorance i have two things to say:

  1. please, please, please may the system do what is right rather than just trying to defend itself.
  2. sometimes it is a great, big, stupid world.

of course, i will freely admit that i am speaking out of very limited knowledge at this moment.