I am a Roman citizen

Yesterday I decided to go to the British Library to study… asking myself at 6am if I would feel good if I didn’t go was the right decision. So I started by finishing posts that I started in AUGUST!!! “The French Adventure” Then I started reading the text of the day. A speech by Josiah Quincy to the town of Quincy on the duties of Free states in 1856. He referred to someone being beaten up…”when the cane went down on Sumners head” I thought this “Sumner” guy got murdered so off I went to go find out what would motivate someone to kill someone by beating… Turns out this Sumner guy wrote a speech called “the crime against Kansas…” where he cussed out the senators for South Carolina and Illinois. The brother of the South Carolina senator was a House of Representatives member and he heard about this, and went to beat him up with a stick used for dogs, because the victim, Sumner is an abolitionist. And so therefore his inferior. Otherwise the House of Representatives member would have challenged him to a duel. What was in this speech that would get his ass beat you ask?

Turns out Sumner has a mouth on him and an education in him. Seems to be quite the orator and the speech is over 100 pages. So we get to the speech…

“The crime against Kansas” is making Kansas a slave state. So a bit of history is that I read “the Missouri compromise” a landmark document which makes slavery legal in “the south” and illegal in “the north” and stipulates the line between “the south” and “the north” spoiler the document has 10 articles and it’s the last one that talks about slavery, the rest talk about locations of government buildings. Anyway… this was being slowly eroded until Kansas which at the time was a territory was applying to be a state. And its constitution at the time of application didn’t allow slavery, but this was being eroded. So this guy Sumner said it was a “a crime of crimes” and “the rape of virgin land” when he called it the “crime of crimes” he made reference to a Roman senator Verusus, who was in Scicily and he beat up a Roman citizen, the Roman citizen cried out “I am a Roman citizen” and the senator did not desist. So he was arraigned, on this and other charges such as the desecration of holy sites. The analogy being that allowing slavery into Kansas was a desecration of their sacred land… hence the “rape of virgin land” quote… now all this would be a cool thing to have read if under 5 hours later a man called Alex Pretti was not murdered in the US by their law enforcement officers. ICE and or Border Patrol apparently. We don’t know, all we do know is that the poor man was shot 10 times and was carrying a weapon which is insane for a British person but in the USA is his constitutional right and he had a permit to carry it so he wasn’t doing anything wrong by having it. Nor did he use it in this situation. Nevertheless he was shot 10 times. Of course the video is online. What a world we live in that before your eyes have pooled in your sockets the footage of your death is on Facebook or MSNBC. What was next was complete chaos. Another man was being held down by law enforcement (I use the term because there’s no way of knowing what agency these people belong to, they are not wearing uniforms so to the untrained eye we have no way of knowing) this man was stating his name, saying “you’re going to kill me, is that what you want?? “ then… most chillingly for me. “I am a US citizen” at this point, just like Versus, they should have desisted. But just like that senator they were too far gone with bloodlust and they didn’t. They didn’t kill him, but they gave him a good beating… for what I don’t know. People wave the word. “Paramilitary” around. And “Gestapo” I guess what I want to know is “what happens now?” You don’t go from beating people in the streets to singing “kumbaya” something fundamental has changed in America where they are now hating “the enemy within” more than they hate other countries. Something has changed in America. Something is rotten. They act like the internet doesn’t exist and people don’t have phones with cameras. There is no world where we go from the murder of Alex Pretti or Renee Good and then go back to thinking the US are sane. We know they hate black people and any minority. But this is white on white crime. If they hate each other so much, if they can kill each other for standing up for immigrants what are they going to do to the immigrants? What are they going to do this summer when they host the world cup? Should they host the world cup? Its 6 months away? Should they just let Mexico and Canada do it? Who is going when you told all the immigrants to go home? A tourist is a type of immigrant? Do you think I want to be shot in the back for the crime of being black in public?

White on white crime scares me more than interracial crime in America. They’re meant to love each other and defend themselves against “us” and if they start killing each other, it means they plan to do much worse to us.

Pray for the families of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

I am a Roman citizen.

Grace and Courage.

Annetta Mother Smith.