This has to stop

It just keeps happening. Faster than we can learn the names.

Stephon Clark. Murdered in his own back yard in Sacramento. Holding a super threatening cell phone.

Danny Ray Thomas. Gunned down in the middle of a Houston street in broad daylight while he was clearly in a state of great emotional distress and in need of help and understanding.

And so many others, some whose names we've already let slip our minds despite our best efforts to remember. We try to remember, but there are just so damn many of them. Unfortunately, in so many of these awful cases of police slaughtering black men in our streets, the name of the victim has been surpassed by so many new names, we barely notice when the authorities quietly announce that there will be no charges or other repercussions for the murderers. I mean officers of the law.

As we learned today, the officers who murdered Alton Sterling will face no charges. Because of course they won't. Because we long ago decided that officers can act as judge, jury, and executioner based on their own fear, as long as its reasonable. But we long ago decided to accept it when they say they acted based on their own fear and that fear was reasonable no matter what. And, of course, we long, long, long ago decided that it's inherently reasonable to fear black men.

This has to stop. It has to stop. We have to make it stop. And we can. We the people actually have the power to make it stop. That's the thing that so many people don't seem to get. The police and prosecutors don't get to dictate to us the rules by which they do this job we pay them for. We can tell them this isn't acceptable. We have that power. It's way too many forgotten names past time for us to use that power.

I don't have any words of wisdom or ideas for how to make this stop. I'm too tired to fight right now. I'm just sick to death of trying to remember these names. There need to be no more names for me to try to remember.