Do you all realize the “crime” that Eric Garner was accused of committing? He was not accused of stealing cigarettes. He was not selling marijuana or any illegal substances. He was simply buying a legal product and then selling it for a different price in another location. This is what sports arenas do when they sell you an eight dollar can of beer. Wal-Mart engages in this practice when they acquire products wholesale and sell them for higher prices. This practice is usually not considered illegal in a free country.
New York puts a thirty cent tax on every single cigarette that it sells today. Mr. Garner was simply buying cigarettes in a cheaper location without this tax and then selling them in New York City. New York politicians did not want to have compete with Mr. Garner’s business model so they made his business model illegal. It is perfectly legal for an individual to drive to New Jersey and buy cheaper cigarettes for themselves yet somehow it is illegal for Mr. Garner to provide this exact same service for others.
The next time you start arguing that Mr. Garner should not have been resisting arrest, please try to remember this in context with the crime of which he was accused. Your government wants you to submit to authority without question. The police want you to obey. They say that it doesn’t matter if you did anything wrong… just get on your knees and put your hands over your head. Politicians and authority figures are increasingly treating your constitutional rights as a nuisance that should be ignored under certain conditions.
What if a SWAT team kicked down your door in the middle of the night because you downloaded a movie or mp3 illegally? What punishment would you deserve if you flailed your arms for a few seconds in protest? Can you imagine if this same group of five police officers had tackled and killed a small blonde fourteen year old girl running an illegal lemonade stand the same way? What about if this had happened to a seventy year old silver-haired grandmother accused of jaywalking? All of these crimes are just as bad as the one that Mr. Garner was accused of committing.
Eric Garner was as husband and a father of six. He was not a perfect person but none of us are. Not only did Mr. Garner not deserve to die that day, he did not deserve to have five police officers hold him down like a dog. New York City could not compete with Mr. Garner’s business model. The powerful people of New York City wanted their tax revenue… so they made Eric Garner into a criminal… they hunted him down… and then they killed him.
Then a grand jury tells us that there is nothing to see here.
Government officials tell us to just “move along”.
Just pause for a second and think about that.
When I think about this quietly to myself… I can’t breathe.
