Urban Thought Collective

Remember the Los Angeles riot that erupted after the Rodney King verdict? I remember it like it was yesterday. I don’t want to look back to examine the underlying causes. I want to look back at how the television coverage played an unexpected roll. It helped law enforcement and prosecutors identify dozens if not hundreds of people who were engaged in criminal activity. Their brazen and lawless activity was exceeded only by their stupidity to look right in the TV cameras.

I can only hope a similar fate waits for every Wal-Mart shopper, whose lust for a flat screen TV exceeded their humanity and chose to keep on running instead of helping the man under their feet. I hope by the time they plug in that new TV, they see their face in HD along with a caption that says “WANTED.”

This story has me so angry and sad. This wasn’t a catastrophe like a fire or earthquake that caused fear and panic where crowds can get out of control and tragically, people can get hurt. This was no fight for survival. This wasn’t a struggle to get food and water rations in some distressed part of the world. That’s what makes this so insane. There wasn’t anything free involved. This was no give away at all.

These were all people who, like most of us, are probably feeling the negative effects of our economy in some shape or form. But times aren’t hard enough to prevent them from camping out over night and waiting in the cold for the opportunity to GIVE THEIR MONEY AWAY. They were so blood thirsty for an X-Box 360, they put enough pressure on a six foot five, two hundred pound man’s chest, that they suffocated him to death.
The brutality of a death like that is hard for me to truly comprehend.

What’s making this matter worse is that I’ve seen more coverage of the Plaxico Burress shooting than the wilding Wal-Mart mob killing. I realize anytime a professional athlete is in the news with a gun, it’s going to be a big story. But I don’t like to operate in the “what ifs”. What if someone else had been hurt by the carelessness of Plaxico’s decisions to carry a gun? The facts are, that didn’t happen. Seems like, in this case, fate has a twisted sense of humor, because Plaxico literally hurt only himself. Anyone else who chose to cover up, lie or in any other way get involved in this incident made their own bad decision as well. So weighing the importance of one man hurting himself versus dozens of people demonstrating a careless disregard for another human being isn’t close. The death of the Wal-Mart employee and the search for all those responsible is by far the bigger ongoing story.

I know that every shopper there was not responsible and those who physically fought to help the fallen man are nothing short of heroes to me.

I want to see the tapes of all the faces on television day and night until as many of the guilty can be identified. That man took a temporary job to help the very people that killed him.

I hope television can help bring his family justice.

Let me get my remote!

Darryl Bell is an actor and Chicago native, best known for his role in classic TV series “A Different World” and Spike Lee’s “School Daze.” His unique television commentary is exclusive to Urban Thought Collective.