Driving.
Walking.
Shopping.
Selling loose cigarettes in front of a store on Staten Island.
Waiting on a business client in a Philadelphia Starbucks.
Add to those list of ‘offenses:’ Doing his job.
By now, thousands, if not millions, have seen the video of the attack on Damien Pickett, a Black man and Co-Captain of the Harriet II, a riverboat docked at a riverfront dock in Montgomery, AL, by a group of White men and a White woman. The reason? For asking the group to move their private pontoon from a spot designated for the Harriet II.
According to reports, Mr. Pickett tried for 45 minutes to get the group to comply while more than 200 people on board his boat waited to get off and proceed with the rest of their evening. According to those same reports, he was ignored and mocked, then blindly attacked before a full out brawl ensued. Some heard at least one of the attackers called him a nigger while striking him.
For having the audacity to do his job.
At this time, I’m satisfied to know that four of the attackers have been arrested and charged accordingly. I hope that they’re prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and, that their respective employers disassociate themselves from such behavior by terminating their employment. More arrests may follow.
Interestingly, despite the allegation that he was called a nigger while being attacked, Mr. Pickett, according to police interviews, does not believe that the attack was racially motivated. Still, the authorities have reserved the right to charge the attackers with a hate crime based on where the investigation leads them.
Allow me to pose these questions to the cowardly attackers:
Just how did you think this was going to go in the year 2023? Did the residue of the march in Charlottesville in 2017 or the assault on The Capitol in 2021 lead you to believe that you could operate in the absence of accountability?
Did you think that this proud Black man would simply yield in obedience to your disrespect, meanness, and taunts?
Did you think that, despite being in plain view, that you existed within some opaque silo and that people who looked like Mr. Pickett would not come to his aid and boldly thwart your attempts to hurt this man?
Did you THINK at all?
