What were my feelings when I saw George Floyd getting murdered?

Hopelessness! The meaning of a lynching! The 400 years of lynching of my ancestors! Great, great, great, great, grandparents, my parents, myself, and my 13 years old son.

The lynching of my Nationality! I felt the realization of the generations that are still struggling to breathe today.

I can’t breathe!

I felt the tears from the whole of my soul to my eyelids, but there were no tears to come out. I wonder if I’m a ‘Georg Floyd’, or his son.

For the first time in my life I felt and learned the exact meaning of “Systemic Racism”, a plague that affects my whole body. The whole African Nationality.

I felt breathless, when my son asked if I saw what had happened, and why?

Silence.

I am unable to answer something that I wasn’t provided an answer for, an answer which my parents or their patents couldn’t provide.

I also felt the White man’s word “Nigger”! I felt the millions of footsteps behind. I felt the pain, depression, desperation, struggle, unrest, discrimination, inequality, denied loans, denied jobs, denied education; I also felt the silent voices of those whom yelled and pleaded, crying and fighting, and untold emotions, all mixed with mine.

I felt that and more, all due to a system that was designed against us. I FEEL the enslavement of “Blacks Only” of the Criminal Justice System. I FEEL being 3/5th of a human under the United States Constitution.

I felt the knee that was on the necks of my people and is still on our necks.

Still, I felt for help.

Then I felt hope. I heard the voices, saw my people around, and felt the strength of 401 years of still NOT broken. I could hear my son’s footsteps in the crowd of protest.

Hope!

Instead of people yelling and screaming they were roaring along. Not being heard but felt. Not only waking America, but the whole world. The meaning of hope, and holding on, pushing through.

I am proud to be Black! I felt us! I am power of black.

I felt, our black lives matter. Our black lives do matter.

I felt us! And we will breathe again!

-By Sharif Brocking-Ton-Torres