Don’t Forget Maud
Wanda Cooper-Jones still looks for her son on her way home from work.
She’d often pass her son, Ahmaud Arbery, along the way as he finished his jog.
“I look for him every time that I'm coming home, and he's just — he's not there,” she said in a CBS interview.
The last run | Created by Jay W. Austin & DALL•E
Ahmaud’s final jog should not have ended the way it did. On February 23, 2020, Maud was murdered.
Three white men were at the scene. A mechanic, a retired Coast Guardsman, and a retired law enforcement officer.
The three were questioned by police. They were released.
There were no arrests, no indictments. Something didn’t feel right.
Then on May 5, 2020, we all saw the video of Ahmaud’s last run. On May 7--74 days after his death--the retired Coast Guardsman and a retired law enforcement officer.
As of this writing, the case is still pending.
Here’s what I think about when I think about Maud.
He was not a perfect human, which makes him perfectly human.
Maud had been arrested before. Twice.
He was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Jogging was his self-prescribed therapy.
When Ahmaud Arbery was murdered he was a 25 year-old black man with a record and a mental illness. Our current system feasts on people like that.
Several days after the video was released and Gregory and Travis McMichael were arrested, George Floyd’s heart failed. He suffocated under the knee of a police officer.
Floyd--like Arbery and the rest of us--was not a perfect human, which makes him perfectly human.
(If it matters to you, then you can explore his imperfections here.)
The imperfections of dead Black people are amplified to justify their death.
When Floyd died he was a 46 year-old black man with a record and a substance abuse disorder. The system survives by creating and recycling people like this.
George Floyd’s murder sent people to the streets. So did Breonna’s.
Some demonstrators said Ahmaud’s name, but more didn’t.
If we forget Ahmaud, then we forget all the others like Ahmaud.
Don’t forget Maud.
Aye, I’m Jay. You’re on my personal site where I post things I make about interrupting mass incarceration, protecting migration, environmental justice & sustainability, language, communications, storytelling, creativity, and tech.
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