I watched – as we all watched – the Dakota Access Pipeline protests on television. Watched as the police responded with force protestors wanting the right to clean water.
The Right will say that police are often demonized by the media, capturing all the offenses without their side of the story. But we watched them treat mass shooters to fast food. We watched as they twirled their thumbs as white, domestic terrorists threatened their lives.
In “American Arithmetic,” Natalie Diaz talks about Native Americans make up a larger percentage in police killings than they do in American population. The echoes of our history continue to reverb through our present, almost entirely ignored by the media.
It is why I chose “American Arithmetic” for the fifth poem.
Chapin City Blues 