A Little Girl Goes To The Park

Injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I want to tell you a serious story today. I want to tell you about a little girl. A little girl whose favourite color was purple. She loved barbies, but was just starting to reluctantly grow out of them. Like many little girls she loved bunnies and cat and dogs. One day while the little is visiting her uncle he tells her and a little boy, the son of a lady he was seeing, too go play outside. Lucky for the little girl there was a park just behind her uncle's house so the two kids get to go to the park. The little girl and the little boy start playing in the park with another little boy who must have lived near by. He's maybe 10 with light blond hair and innocent blue eyes, any mothers dream. We will call this little boy James and the other little boy Andy. So Andy, James and the little girl are playing and James asks if they want to see a cool toy his dad got him, his mom hates it, it's a BB gun. The little girl gets nervous, but its also kind of exciting, kind of cool. 

I also was to tell you another kid, a little boy. This little boy we will call him Tim, he enjoyed going to after school programs to play games with his friends and making crafts and swimming. He enjoyed hanging out with his sister and going to the park. One day he went to the park with a toy BB gun.

The little girl and and Andy and James were standing on the edge of the park facing the forest and Andy shot at a tree, but it did not hit a tree. The 3 children ran into the forest and much to their horror Andy had shot a poor rabbit! We ran to the rabbit, wouldn't you? We hadn't meant to shoot her and we were sad and scared, what had we done? That innocent little rabbit had just been hopping around and we were playing with a dangerous toy, and we shouldn't have been, Andy's mom had told him not too!

We started to cry. We 3 children, tall brave James, the big brother she had always wanted, he was scared, scared not just of getting in trouble but because on some level he knew we had taken a life and that was wrong, but there was nothing that could have been done for that poor rabbit. Little Andy smaller than us but just barely, he had felt so cool! Like a TV hero but now he was a villain, he had killed and it did not feel good. The little girl, who thought she didn't need to get an adult but now wished she had ran home. The three stood in tears, in shock for a second, we tearfully agreed not to speak of this, no telling; surely you did something similar, something bad and upsetting and dumb as a kid? We all ran home. What ever you did, you ran home, these 3 ran home, and I ran home.

Did I deserve to be in that poor rabbits place? I hope not. Did you when you did something bad as child? I think not. Like wise that rabbit did not deserve what she got.

Tim meanwhile was still had his BB gun he was in a totally different park, on a different day. He was playing all alone on his way home from a friends house. In the slight distance two young men stood smoking. The men heard a loud bang and a thud and they turned. What they saw was shocking. Tim falling too the ground and two grown men shooting real guns at him.The men did not run to Tim like the 3 children ran to that rabbit, the two men did not seem too care what they had done. His toy fell with him to the cold ground and the men just stood there.

Tim's sister came running but one of the men stopping her! He grabbed her and roughly restrained her. No one ran to poor TIm bleeding like the rabbit on the ground, no one checked his pulse or applied pressure and only his sister in chains cried. 

4 kids in 2 different parks playing almost the same game. 1 child is killed.

No one was arrested for killing Tim.

Andy and James and the little girl went on to live normal and full lived and no one ever tried to kill them, no one cared that they had gone to the park and no one cared that they plays with a dangerous toy, even though Andy's mom said not too. No one ever suggested that Andy, James or the little girl could have been killed, and no one would have been ok with it if they had been. 

So why was it ok to kill Tim? Where are the good police men to arrest the men who killed Tim? Where is the judge and jurors? 

If you haven't heard about Tim, oh it's probably because if you didn't notice I misspelled his name, his name was Tamir, Tamir Rice and he was probably really scared when he was laying there bleeding in the park listening to his sister cry for him. He died in a fear that Andy and James and the little girl will never truly understand he died scared and choking on injustice embodied.

He still deserves justice. Demand it. The way you would for Andy or James, the little girl, your little girl.