‘My son matters’: Jacob Blake’s family calls for officer’s arrest, peaceful protest

 

WASHINGTON POST

Anger-fueled protests radiated across the nation Tuesday as the family of a 29-year-old Black man shot in the back by police in this lakeside city demanded swift action to bring officers to justice.

In a highly emotional appearance two days after the shooting, Jacob Blake Jr.’s parents and siblings called for healing and peace following consecutive nights of violence. Julia Jackson, Blake’s mother, asked for Americans to show “how humans are supposed to treat each other.”

But the family also pinned responsibility for Blake’s grievous injuries on what they called a racist law enforcement system that brutalizes Black people, and they expressed dismay that his shooter had not yet been fired or charged.

They spoke as Blake — who was shot at least seven times, the bullets piercing his spinal column, shattering vertebrae and shredding vital organs — underwent emergency surgery. The shooting left the father of five young children, three of whom witnessed the incident, paralyzed from the waist down.

“It is going to take a miracle for Jacob Blake Jr. to ever walk again,” said the family’s lawyer, Benjamin Crump.

“They shot my son seven times,” said Jacob Blake Sr., his father, at a news briefing on Tuesday afternoon, growing emotional as he spoke. “Seven times. Like he didn’t matter. But my son matters. He’s a human being, and he matters.”

An American summer ushered in with a mix of peaceful mass demonstrations and destructive riots in response to the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd appeared poised in the waning days of August to close with a similarly potent blend.

“I want them to stop killing us. Period,” said Tarcia Parker, a 36-year-old Black woman who works in health care and who was protesting late Tuesday afternoon in Louisville, a city that has its own high-profile shooting victim at the hands of police, Breonna Taylor.

The outrage over Blake’s shooting has been injected into the home stretch of a presidential campaign in which President Trump has sought to use fears of urban violence, portraying it as an existential threat to placid suburban living.

More than 48 hours after Blake was shot, Trump had yet to address the incident directly. But speakers at the Republican National Convention this week have repeatedly invoked burning cities, blaming Democratic leaders for allegedly letting mobs run rampant.

“It’s almost like this election is shaping up to be church, work and school versus rioting, looting and vandalism,” the president’s eldest child, Donald Trump Jr., said in his prime-time speech Monday night.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden, by contrast, called for a thorough, independent investigation of Blake’s shooting while sympathizing with the “grief and outrage that yet another Black American is a victim of excessive force.”