The Gantt Report - I recently read a story in The New York Times about how Lima, Ohio police officers, allegedly looking for a drug dealer, shot a woman and her infant child.

The woman, who was not a crime suspect, was killed and the baby suffered serious gunshot injuries.

How many more Black women, men and babies will be shot before we rise up and protect our own?

No matter how much we beg law enforcers to treat us fairly, no matter how much we cry out for justice and no matter how much we strive for racial and gender equality, the violence against us will not stop until we make it stop!

Don’t act like the Ohio incident is an isolated case. In every state of the union, we are treated like second and perhaps third class citizens. In Ohio, they mistreat us with an Ohio accent and in Florida, for instance, we are mistreated by people that sound like they come from Florida.

We should have learned years ago when Rodney King was beaten in Los Angeles. If you and your Black friends, neighbors and family members don’t have a video of police misconduct, authorities will say there was no police misconduct.

If you don’t know it, police officers are like everyone else. There are some very good lawmen that adhere to their oaths and pledges to serve and protect the community. And, there are some closet klansmen on the force that are so trigger happy they pray daily that they have a chance to fire on an unarmed sister or brother.

We have to pull the sheets off of officers that shoot people based on race. Let’s track those guys down and expose them like Jews expose Nazis. We should never forget or belittle how we are victimized and who our victimizers are.

I wonder how many unjust shootings would take place if the shooters thought that the victims would shoot back? I wonder how many wrongful uses of force would take place if America began to go up in flames like it did in the 60s and 70s? I wonder how many Black leaders and also ordinary citizens would be murdered if we all said, “We’re tired as hell and we refuse to take this any more”?

Protect yourself! Defend yourself! (Gantt’s new book “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing” is coming soon. Contact Lucius at www.allworldconsultants.net)