Wednesday, April 19: Only in America
As people die for knocking on the wrong door, we're all asking the wrong questions
After Ralph Yarl was nearly killed for knocking on the wrong door earlier this week, and Kaylin Gillis was indeed murdered for pulling into the wrong driveway, we collectively need to ask ourselves some tough questions.
The Associated Press ran a headline today that reads, “Can a doorbell ring justify a ‘stand your ground’ shooting?, which is decidedly not one of the questions I had in mind. Rather than ask why our society has grown so lethally suspicious or how race relations have contributed to an elderly man shooting through his own front door to hurt a Black child, many news outlets are already attempting to justify a crime thats layered in its unbelievability.
The old white man in question, Andrew Lester, claims he had already gone to bed when his doorbell rang just before 10 pm. His first reaction was to get up, grab a gun, and go check on who could be bothering him at this time of night. Seeing a Black male that he claims was pulling the handle of the front door, the 84-year-old fool opened fire, no questions asked. Lester claims he believed someone was attempting to break into his house, which is a pretty damning statement in and of itself, but it pales in comparison to what happened next.
Lester opened the door and shot the child a second time, saying, “Don’t come back around here.” Yarl, after being shot twice at close range, then walked to three different homes nearby seeking help. When he was finally able to reach a homeowner, he was instructed to lie on the ground and put his hands in the air. With two bullets in his body and blood leaking out of his head, he was somehow still seen as more a threat than a victim. Maybe that’s a question worth asking; why did the first two homes refuse to help? And why did the third homeowners feel so threatened by an injured child in need of help?
Yarl, as we now know, is an honor student who simply went to the wrong Kansas City address while trying to pick up his younger siblings. He very nearly paid for his honest mistake with his life. Perhaps that’s the question we should really be asking here; is ringing the wrong doorbell a crime punishable by death?
Side Items
Ben & Jerry Unionize: Workers at the flagship ice cream shop filed for a union election earlier this week, and days later the company released a statement acknowledging their efforts and supporting their plans to unionize. Apparently big bloated companies are still allowed to listen to their workers instead of investing untold sums of cash on union-busting law firms (ahem, REI)
Child Labor is Cool Again: The Iowa state senate voted earlier this week to allow children to work on assembly lines and serve alcohol. The regressive laws were voted on at 4:52am, ensuring that any public outcry would be too late to save the kids from factory work. The days of chimney-sweeping children are just around the corner
What Doesn’t Kill You: Damar Hamlin has decided he loves playing football enough to die for it. Months after suffering a horrifying injury on the playing field that left him unresponsive, Hamlin has announced his intention to begin training and return to the game that almost robbed him of his life. Four and a half months ago he went into cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated, but for reasons that can’t be explained, Hamlin believes his destiny is to return to the gridiron. I pray if I ever made a decision this questionable there would be people in my life to sit me down and let me know how foolish I was being