From filmmaker, activist and ally Michael Moore:
"For well over 24 hours we’ve had to listen to white media and white law enforcement tell us they can’t for sure call the Georgia massacre of Asian women at three Asian-American businesses a 'hate crime.' Do the cops and cable news think we’re that stupid? They also won’t just say these words: 'It’s a mass murder of women.'
If a white Christian man went into a Black business and killed mostly Black people, what would you call that? Or six Jewish women are slaughtered in a kosher deli? Or 8 lesbians slaughtered in a gay bar? 'We’ll need to do more investigation before we determine if this is a hate crime. The suspect has told us his murder spree had nothing to do with the fact they were lesbians/Jews/Blacks. He basically was just having a bad day.' So they take the word of a mass murderer over what their and our own eyes actually see! 'Well, he said he wasn’t motivated by racism.' Unbelievable. Once again, we are shown, if you’re white (and not too poor), you can just make shit up and the police will believe you. They’ll even take you to Burger King (white mass murderer at the Black church in Charleston), or offer you a bottle of water and let you go (Kenosha killer) when your hands are raised and you’re trying to turn yourself in.
Do you wonder what it’s like to be an Asian-American this morning — 'my own country and its police and its media will not even acknowledge my existence or the existence of racism and violence against me. Will anyone stand with me?'
Will we? Will you, cable news? Can you just straight up say what this is? A hate crime against Asians and women? SAY IT!
And will someone please explain to me why every time they arrest one of these sick white men for murder, the cops never pull their guns and shoot them like they do innocent unarmed Black men who have done nothing wrong (other than being born Black) and are just walking home? 'Shoot Blacks first, ask questions later' is the motto of American law enforcement.
(P.S. I long for the day when we have a media not owned and/or run by nearly all white men. In fact, I long for the day when the media isn’t owned at all, where profit isn’t the primary purpose of its existence - and where peacekeepers answer to the community and are overseen by the neighborhoods.)"
