Yep, guns and drugs were dropped off in neighborhoods. They made their way, like a plague, to rural and impoverished areas.

You can call it a twisted “social experiment” and guess what? Many of us did exactly what was expected.

We picked up, used, and resold those guns and drugs. We manufactured and modified them. We got our children, mothers, fathers, and grandparents to smuggle, sell, and use them. We’re so hooked on them that we will kill to keep them.

Guns and INCREASED Violence

Let me start this section off by saying, I’m not against guns. I come from a family of gun owners. So don’t roll your eyes and think I’m attacking guns, owners rights, etc.

In the US, we have more guns in our homes and on the streets than ever before, yet our country is less safer. The bigger and the more rounds they’ll carry, the more rabid we act over them. We’re looking for a slaughterhouse effect. It’s no longer a standing conviction about our right to protect ourselves from the government bursting in our doors, armed to the teeth, because we pick and choose who has the right to bear arms against law enforcement and military. We choose whose life matters.

We are the boogie man we warn children about. We’re obsessed with death, killing, and maiming. Although we’re not trying to be the ones with a bullet lodged in our head or body. We want the perceived power the weapon gives us but we don’t want to take responsibility for the bullet when it achieves its purpose.

Part of this madness is our obsession with violence and the other part is that people are scared and the gun gives a false sense of security. The truth is that no one wants to take an old fashioned butt kicking anymore. No one wants to ball up their fists and risk getting their tail handed to them. No one’s willing to risk getting body slammed and hospitalized. Nope. It’s much easier to grab that gun and pull the trigger, knowing you could end more than one life in that moment.

Let me say this again, I’m not against guns. I’m a gun owner. Let’s be clear on what I am against.

I’m against fools recklessly pulling the trigger, especially on weapons that were designed for war, weapons issued to our military. Some of our law enforcement agencies don’t even have these guns. Why? Because they were designed for war and given to soldiers, not to people who were sworn to maintain and try to create peace.

Look, it’s simple, unless we’re facing a zombie attack, we don’t need those type of guns in the hands of regular Joe and Jane Blow, and definitely not in the hands of ole’ Karen — she’ll end up accidentally killing her poodle in the chaos, and then blaming her intended target for her lack of skill and control under pressure, and then try to sue the victims family for pain and suffering. Before I continue, let me apologize to poodles everywhere. I mean you no offense or harm.

When the Second Amendment was created, people were using muskets and flintlock pistols. You had to be intentional and strategic. Now folks are running around with M2s, M4s, M16s, M240s, M249s, some with firing ranges of more than 2,600 feet. There’s no perceived threat in the US that you can justify shooting at more than 2,600 feet away, and if it’s within five feet of you, imagine the damage you will create if you have no trigger control (or just want to be reckless) and shoot more than one round. And I can already hear someone saying, “Well where’s the fun in only shooting one round?” Well, if you’re a good shot, then one round will do whatever you aimed to do— disable them or send them to their Maker. Multiple rounds is a great way to secure your spot in hell, if there is one.

Look at the disease we’ve allowed to grow and fester in our neighborhoods and throughout our country. Yet we call other nations savages when we see the violence they endure. This is both ironic and hypocritical.

Trafficking and Violence

We even allowed pimping, prostitution, and trafficking to take place in our communities. We didn’t think twice about a woman or child being rented, traded, or sold for sex or other twisted forms of gratification. When we hear stories about victims what’s the common questions and statements we hear some people say in response?

• “How do we know they’re telling the truth?
• “Was it consensual?”
• “Maybe that’s the line of work they want to be in”
• “They shouldn’t have ran away from home”
• “If they didn’t want to be there they could’ve left”
• “They obviously don’t come from a good and supportive family”
• “How could they have not gotten away?”
• “They wouldn’t have been pimped if they weren’t out there hoeing”
• “They’re runaways, they wanted to be there”
• “Well look at their social media profile, they’re not so innocent”

We scrutinize, ridicule, shame, vilify, dehumanize, and blame the victim. Especially if the victim is financially poor.

Even now, we have all been informed of the thousands of women and children being sold as sex and domestic slaves. We hear and read reports that many of the girls and women we are seeing on porn sites can also be sex slaves in trafficking rings. Some are drugged up to make the act seem consensual. We know this, but it’s not slowing down the number of views, downloads, and subscriptions. Just the opposite. We’re literally helping to finance the renting, selling, and raping of people. We’re helping the profiteers to become millionaires and multi-millionaires. Someone’s daughter, sister, niece, granddaughter is a sex slave. She could be your daughter, sister, niece, cousin, granddaughter.

Add in the Drugs and Gangs

We’ve watched our families implode because of drugs, gun violence, pimping, and trafficking. We’ve gone to more funerals than weddings because of this nonsense. We keep seeing the deaths, the overdoses, the shootings, the rape cases, the discarded bodies.

We even sing and rap about dealers, gangsters, and pimps—glorifying them like idols. How are they not our gods when we talk about them and interact with them more than we speak to and about our spiritual God? We know more about them than we do about Him.

Our federal and state governments have spent the past 50 years criminalizing drug users and addicts, forcing them into redefined plantation systems, giving longer prison sentences based on what feels like a color coding formula. And in states that have chosen to treat the addiction rather than punish the user, they have seen a remarkable and positive trend taking place. They’re seeking to help the people with dignity and it’s having a positive impact. Yet, the majority of US states along with the federal authorities, choose to continue the process of criminalization, all while wondering why their statistics keep getting worse year after year, decade after decade.

Just like the government botched their war on poverty in the 1960s and 1970s, and our country is still suffering from those reckless decisions, we are experiencing the same whiplash effect with these other declarations of war. I will share my thoughts on the poverty war later. But let me ask you again…

Is there really a war on drugs, violence, and human trafficking?

Who Are We Protecting?

Are our children and women not valuable enough to protect?

Because clearly they’re being rented and sold at high volume. Someone has created a lucrative lifestyle selling and trading our people as commodities. We are enslaved. It’s just this time it’s not just by force. Some of us willingly have put on these shackles. Some of us are willingly serving as overseers and drivers on this ever-growing plantation system. Some of us are willingly entertaining the owners with our shucking, jiving, fetching, stepping, singing, dancing, and acting. And just like hundreds of years ago, some of us are selling and owning our own people.

Look how we protect celebrities, swearing they’re not guilty of their crimes, even though you weren’t there to witness any of it. All because they’re a celebrity and you still want to sing their songs, watch their tv shows, movies, stand up comedic performances, or wear their team jersey. All because none of the victims were wealthy and powerful enough to seek and gain justice immediately after they were victimized.

We have politicians in office and those who recently left office, who have been accused of sexual misconduct, solicitation, rape, molestation, and having sexual relations with minor-age sex workers. Stop chalking up stuff as “locker room talk” or “boys will be boys”, or “men will be men”.

Why do folks give these predators a pass?

Because the girls and women aren’t wealthy enough and powerful enough to have clobbered these predators and had them locked up soon after they were violated. They weren’t deemed important enough to have been taken seriously. For many, it required multiple victims to come forward before anyone entertained the idea of seeking justice for them. And as we’ve seen before, sometimes even that is just a formality, a box checked for optics sake. Had these children and women come from families of influence, this would be a nonissue because the violators would’ve been locked up.

Where is the accountability?

This isn’t about politics. This isn’t even about the wealthy versus the working class. This is about human rights and dignity.

Don’t you think it’s atrocious that we always want proof of sexual crimes? We want to further violate the victim. We want them to relive having their power stripped and stomped upon. We do the same thing with domestic violence. We want to see the bruises, blood, and gore.

Is there really a war on drugs, violence, and human trafficking?

And For Y’all Bible Folks

Do you want to know why Adam and Eve were cursed?

They didn’t take responsibility for giving into temptation. Eve blamed the serpent. Adam blamed Eve and then went a step farther and blamed God for giving him Eve. Yep, the serpent told Adam and Eve about the fruit and said God lied to them about why He didn’t want them eating it. But the serpent didn’t make them eat it. That was their choice and then it was their choice to not take responsibility for their actions.

Even with Eve taking the first bite, Adam could’ve held her accountable and said, “Sucks to be you, I’m gonna miss you when you’re gone, because God told you the consequences”. And then ran and told God the truth about what went down. Adam could’ve chosen to say to the serpent, “No thank you. We’re doing just fine” and walked away from the serpent, convincing Eve to leave with him. Instead he gave in to the temptation and took no responsibility for his actions. It was everyone else’s fault that he made a reckless choice.

Our Responsibility and Complicity

Let’s be clear, we are just as responsible for the monsters that live amongst us because we give them the pass to breed chaos everywhere they go. We elect them to office, we finance their lifestyle, and we don’t hold them accountable.

Sadly, some of us are also monsters.

We use guns and drugs against our own people, wiping out generations, and freeing up neighborhoods to be gentrified. Then we complain that our neighborhoods are no longer our own, and that we’re priced out of the market. Or we watch rural communities turn into ghost towns that are later gobbled up by developers who build overpriced subdivisions and resorts on the land that our families once lived on for several generations.

Yes, the ones who dropped the temptation at our feet should be held accountable. Yes, the ones who financially benefit from our incarceration and enslavement should be held accountable. And those of us who choose to give into the temptation, should also be held accountable. Those of us who see it all and say absolutely nothing, should be held accountable too! Every time we say, “That’s none of my business” when we see or hear someone being victimized, we are complicit in that crime.

Is there really a war on drugs, violence, and human trafficking?

We can protest in front of government offices, police stations, corporations, and the houses of racists. We can post online profiles of the “Karen’s” and contact the media and her job to expose her. We can pull out our phones and record violence against us at the hands of police and others. But where’s our protesting and social media posting of houses, buildings, and warehouses of known drug, gang, sex and human trafficking terrorists? They are terrorizing your neighborhood. They aren’t foreign threats. They’re your neighbors. They’re your family members. You grew up with them.

Someone left the explosives but we detonated them, re-upped, and let off more.

Is there really a war on drugs, violence, and human trafficking?

We weren’t solely buying drugs and guns from people who didn’t look like us, who didn’t live in our neighborhoods and towns. Nope. We bought from folks who grew up on the same streets as us, attended the same schools and houses of faith as us, who go to the same barber shops and beauty salons as us.

We know them. We know they’re selling death or the means to make death a reality real quick for someone. We even created a code of silence to protect the pushers and peddlers of these evil vices. We treat them like royalty, like gods, something to respect and fear. The more money we give them the more they launder, and the richer and wealthier they become. They leach off of our neighborhoods and drain the life and light right out, and then they have the audacity to relocate their family to better neighborhoods, while keeping their operations running like a gas station or convenience store.

In your neighborhood. In your community.

You may even know where they operate. But you say and do nothing because you fear retaliation. You fear they’ve paid off the police to turn a blind eye. But here’s the thing, we had a chance to keep that crap out of our neighborhoods, to disincentivize infiltrating law enforcement ranks with payola. But we wouldn’t ban together.

We did and we do nothing, while the ones on the lower rungs of the ladder face decades or lifetimes in prison, all because they believed the hype and thought that being “about that life” would reward them with a better life. They were recruited because their lives didn’t matter. They were collateral damage. They are merely pawns in a global game of human currency.

You can’t reasonably pursue justice against one group of people while protecting their co-conspirators.

Is there really a war on drugs, violence, and human trafficking?

If we want to rid our homes, streets, and neighborhoods of violence and poison, we need to stop looking to the people who offloaded the mess onto us to now free us from the mess they created. We need to stop hoping the neighborhood terrorists will change their ways and give up that lifestyle, to redeem the community.

We must free and save ourselves.

Stop expecting empathy, remorse, and reparations from someone who is clearly apathetic to and economically benefiting from your plight.

~Natasha