[Kareem Abdul-Jabbar] ICE Kills Again
ICE Kills Again, Another GOVT Shutdown Brewing, & Horton Doesn’t Hear a WHO
Some Snippets from his Substack Article:
“Long before I became Kareem Abdul‑Jabbar the basketball player, I was Lew Alcindor, a young Black man growing up in a country that insisted it was post‑racial while showing me, every day, that it wasn’t. By the time I got to UCLA, I had already seen enough to know that staying quiet would not protect me or anyone who looked like me. I had watched cities burn after Dr. King’s assassination. I had seen the bodies. I had heard the grief. I had lived the fear. Speaking up wasn’t a choice. It was the only honest response.”
“I remember boycotting the 1968 Olympics and being told I was un‑American, ungrateful, disrespectful to my country. But I knew what I had seen. Dr. King had been killed that spring. The summer before, Newark burned for five days, Detroit for eight. People told me to stay quiet, to just play basketball. And I had to decide whether to accept the story being told about me or to trust my own eyes.
Back then, we didn’t have cameras in every pocket. We had each other’s testimony. We had the bodies. We had the burned buildings, the charred remains of rage and fear. The truth was written into the world around us.
That’s the thread connecting 1968 to Minneapolis today. When you demand accountability, the system tries to turn you into the problem. Institutions question your motives, your patriotism, even your right to speak. It’s a distraction, a smokescreen. (Or, in this case, a gas screen.) Because nothing says “law and order” like hurling pepper spray and noxious gas, and refusing to investigate your own questionable or downright illegal actions.”
“My father used to tell me that we don’t get to choose whether hard things happen. We only get to choose how we respond. Right now, the people of Minneapolis are choosing to stand up, to bear witness, to refuse silence. I say we stand with them.”