5 Years Since
Saturday, November 9, 2019 will be the five-year anniversary of the murder of Aura Rosser by two white Ann Arbor cops.
5 years since
November 9, 2014
Ann Arbor police department shot and killed an innocent black woman named Aura Rosser
We rose up
Ann Arbor city council publicly announced they’re nothing (and still doing nothing)
FTP earned another meaning
We lost a soul, we gained a name to utter on our tongues
5 years since Aura Rosser was shot, killed, assassinated, wasted, by police terror
5 years since complacent bubble of bourgeois college town was disgraced by police murderous cowardice
5 years since a beautiful artist, Detroit, person was snuffed out by agents of the state
5 years since a beautiful Black Woman was murdered by police
5 years since in protest her grieving anonymous comrades carried a coffin signifying the death of justice
5 years since magnificent street actions halted traffic by mass energy, loud shouting, and cool relaxed limbs in the center of intersections
5 years since the drums beat in Washtenaw County
5 years since prophetic denunciations slammed against the walls of police downtown monstrous headquarters
5 years since intersectionality in practice went along with it in theory
5 years since “calling out” hurt lots of feelings without chance of discourse
5 years of town/gown alliance, temporarily anyway
5 years since patriotic sing-song didn’t quite workout for everybody as means of stopping traffic
5 years since folks began to carry signs against police violence in front of the courthouse
5 years since people began to think, some anyway
5 years since black/white worked together
5 years of sadness
5 years since a sister lost her sister
5 years since a daughter lost her mother
5 years since Aura smiled
5 years since Aura laughed
5 years since Aura Rain’s eyes rained tears
5 years since two white cops were sent to a black household where a man and woman were arguing
5 years since two white cops kicked open the front door of 2083 Winewood
5 years since white Mark Raab drew his taser
5 years since white David Ried drew his gun
5 years since they stood side by white side and murdered Aura Rain Rosser
5 years since white Prosecutor Brian Mackie refused to sit these two white cops down for an interview
5 years since no one at all sat these two white cops down for an interview
5 years since Raab and Ried were given 48 hours to co-author their fraudulent white narrative of how they both came to fire weapons at Aura Rain Rosser
5 years since they wrote they were afraid for their lives and so fired their white weapons at her within a minute of entering this black household
5 years since white Ann Arbor believed them
2 years since they promoted David Ried to Sergeant
4 months since they scrubbed his white name from their website
5 years since
A call for help, helped no one
Aura had something bright
Break her insides out along yellow walls in a narrow hallway
A phone call turned hunting mission
We mourned a woman’s name we should not have known
We carried the weight of spilled blood in our throats
We called her name on every street corner in Ann Arbor and she did not come back
We sat freezing in the middle of winter hoping we could thaw out a better verdict
5 years since
Thanksgiving brought a ghost to the table
Her children experienced the coldest Christmas
Another call for help killed someone
Drums, chants, and long walks around sharp corners chewed winter away
Another killer in white sheets stained blue slid free
Her name filled city council meetings and intersections and stomachs and
Her lover smoked a cigarette swearing this was not what he ordered
Said the officer did not leave a return address for the bullet casings
Said they spilled her everywhere, and she was less of a mess when he called
Said no one came to clean up afterwards
Said there were still pieces of his love on the floor when he left that night
Said crying over spilled blood don’t change the guilt
5 years since strangers linked arms across cities
5 years since Aura
5 years since Aura
5 years since.
Written by some of us who found each other then
black-ink.info 