Every day, it seems like more hip hop artists are coming out to talk about what happened to Mike Brown in Ferguson. I think that’s a great think. Killer Mike is the latest, joining artists such as Young Jeezy, Lupe Fiasco, Nelly, and T.I. Killer Mike went onto CNN on August 20th, and he even wrote an editorial piece for the well-known publication Billboard on the 18th. Mike talked about how police officers have difficult jobs, and that it is right to respect what they do. But he also stated that he believed that the police officers in Ferguson had used excessive force:
“We trust police with the power of life and death and with that trust comes a greater responsibility to be better than the current standard of policing I see across America every day,” he writes. “Being a cop must be hard. My dad was one, and never wanted any of his children to follow in his footsteps. Being a cop is often seeing the worst of the human condition and behavior. With all of that said, there is no reason that Mike Brown and also Eric Garner are dead today — except bad policing, excessive force and the hunt-and-capture-prey mentality many thrill-seeking cops have adapted.
Killer Mike went on to say that it felt like “Egypt, or Syria or Palestine…and as if death can come, without reason, from a uniformed government official.” The biggest recurring theme in Mike’s pieces was that our rights as citizens of the United States are being violated by the people who are supposed to be protecting them. It’s good to see so many hip hop artists supporting Mike Brown. Now it’s time to start working to vote out the politicians who keep allowing this to happen.