On Tuesday night, a young activist named Keiajah "Kj" Brooks singlehandedly dragged the entire Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners by their nose hairs down several flights of steps and threw them into the dumpsters. Rhetorically speaking, of course, but she gave a brilliant, righteous, and creative reading nonetheless. It was the best use of two-plus minutes of allotted speaking time I've seen since this dude made Connie change her name.
Activists and community members were there to speak out at the meeting of the Board to call for the firing/resignation of Police Chief Rick Smith in the face of longstanding systemic racism in the police department. The real star of the meeting, though, was Ms. Brooks.
She named each and every one of the people on the Board, identified their moral failings and unfitness to serve, refused to stop when her time was up, and rounded it all off with the perfect Bible quote. She began by warning them that she was not there to play:
BROOKS: Fair warning, um, I'm not nice. And I don't seek to be respectable. I'm not asking y'all for anything, cause y'all can't and won't be both my savior and my oppressor.
I don't want reform. I want to turn this building into luxury low cost housing. These would make some really nice apartments to me.
Firstly, stop using Black children as photo opportunities. Cause they're cute now, but in 10 years, they're Black male suspects in red shirts and khaki shorts. Eating cookies and drinking milk with children does not absolve you of your complicity in their oppression and denigration, Rick Smith.
Because Kansas City will spend more on police than education, and then try to encourage children to feast with their oppressors.Y'all are really weird. It's asinine to be called radical, or a homegrown terrorist for not wanting government employees to kill citizens in any instance.
So I'm not here begging anything of soulless white folks, and self-preserving Black folks. You get one life, and you all in this room have chosen profits over people. And that's pathetic.*
Watch the entire 3 minutes. You won't be sorry.
*Credit to Julianna Romanyk ( @heyromanyk on Twitter) for transcribing.
