So, I just pressed the final version of the ARC, so I think it’s...

So, I just pressed the final version of the ARC, so I think it’s time to start talking about my new anthology (co-edited by Bill Campbell and John Jennings), ARTISTS: AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY.

Back in December, Bill, John, and I were talking about Eric Garner and Tamir Rice and John Crawford and Michael Brown and etc, etc, etc when Bill (publisher at Rosarium Press) said that we should do a benefit book called APB: ARTISTS AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY. John and I signed on to co-edit the anthology and we put out a call for submissions - comics, essays, short stories, and poems - in order to put together a collection of personal narratives, representative accounts, and thought-provoking analysis and solutions of a systemic problem in our society.

Seven months later, I pressed the ARC. It was the hardest book I ever had to work on. It defeated me, at times, especially as I sat down to work on it and was bombarded with news of another slaying and yet another slaying and a pool party and a church getting shot up and black churches burning. You’d think incidents like that would motivate you to sit down and finish the book, but you’ll be surprised how easily they defeat you. 

You start to think to yourself, “What difference can a book make?”

It’s easy to answer, “It can’t make a difference.” You look around at this epidemic of anti-intellectualism in the United States and you start to believe that a book is the last  thing that could make a difference.

But then I re-read the final piece in the book, an original poem by Mondo We Langa, who has been in prison since 1971, convicted of killing an Omaha police officer on controversial evidence. These particular lines from his poem:

I know Akai Gurley fell
I hadn’t heard of him before
Nor of Amadou Diallo or Sean Bell
Prior to their killings
Which of these two took slugs in the greater number
I don’t recall
My memory is too encumbered
With the names
Of so many more before and since

And I realized…this is happening so frequently, that it has become impossible to remember the names and circumstances. That one story bleeds into the next and you forget who was in a Walmart and who was just walking down the street and how many shots were fired into who. 

So maybe the book doesn’t need to make a difference - maybe it just needs to stand as a recording of the problem as it exists right now. People who have stories to tell and these stories deserved to be remembered, all of the details, so that our eyes don’t gloss over when we try to remember who killed who with what weapon in what room from yesterday or the day before or the day before or last month or last year or last decade. 

I think this is an important book for that reason alone - just to help people remember the details. And this isn’t necessarily self-promotion, all of the proceeds from this book are going to the Innocence Project. They already signed off on it, none of us will ever seem a dime for our work.

But we don’t need to see dimes, we need to see these stories, because seeing these stories will at least change one thing: the record. Our collective narrative. Our attention to the details.

ARTISTS AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY will be released October 1st. You can pre-order it from almost any on-line retailer. All proceeds go to the Innocence Project. Please consider supporting this book.