Father of Jacob Blake’s Remarks Transcript: 2020 March on Washington

Jacob Blake Sr.: (00:00)
You have to act a certain way or they will kill you. They’ve made that very clear. They will kill you. So they become the judge, the jury, and the executioner, is what they become. All in one.

Speaker 2: (00:15)
[inaudible 00:00:15] Constitution.

Because my son didn’t make no motions towards that officer. He was walking away from him. He had to pull his shirt to continue to shoot him. How would you feel if that was your child?

Speaker 2: (00:29)
It’s horrifying.

Speaker 3: (00:30)
[crosstalk 00:00:30] Is there a message you want the people here to take away from the incident with your soon?

The lesson is that we all must stay together. We all must stay together. We must move in one accord. I’m not angry, I’m tired. When you become angry, you lose your ability to think properly. When you let your emotions take over, you don’t slide like you’re supposed to slide. You don’t put that left foot to block in the certain hole. You understand? You don’t slide, you keep your feet up, [upfield 00:00:01:17]. You never let anybody push you back. But at the same time, you never get angry. Because if I get angry and I started screaming and hooping and hollering, they say that I’m one of them crazy ones. But I have a little bit of edumacation and I understand how I’m supposed to present myself. I understand how I’m presenting my family.

I want people to take with them that they can’t burn down a building because when they burn that building down, there’s nowhere for us to use. That use of that building and that property is gone. Violence begets violence. We can’t get anything done within our own society with violence. The only thing that violence gives you is oppression, and that’s what they rule us with.

Speaker 4: (02:11)
Sir, with everything your family is going through, why was it important for you to show up here today?

Because my father was here for the first March on Washington. And you my man. Even though he got on his joint, that’s my guy from MSNBC right there.

Speaker 5: (02:30)
Let me ask you this, has anybody explain to you why your son is shackled?

No, they have given me no reason. He’s paralyzed from the waist down.

Speaker 2: (02:39)
Where’s he going?

Where’s he going? And he’s shackled. He has that cold steel on his right ankle. Just explain that to me-

Speaker 2: (02:53)
What kind of policy is that?

Where can he go? Anybody ever heard an overkill? That’s like slapping..

Speaker 6: (03:05)
You may have explained this before, but I was inside the Lincoln Memorial where there are other mothers and fathers that are just like you that had to deal with this. How does that make you feel when you’re here and you see that there’s a negative common cause with moms and dads, either having their child a victim of police brutality or losing their child to police brutality?

At a certain point in time, you should get tired of it. We, as a people, should be tired of it. We’re tired of looking at the news, reading newspapers and seeing our brown brothers and sisters killed. And if not killed, maimed, deemed useless. You understand what I’m saying? It should hurt everybody the way it hurts me enough to come out here. My son is still laying in the ICU paralyzed, but I’m here to share my story because I want somebody to get some strength from it.

Speaker 6: (04:09)
Where does that strength come from for you?

That strength comes from a line of Blake’s. And when my father walked across that Edmund Pettus Bridge, he didn’t show no fear. He knew they were going to whoop him and he took that whooping. Sometimes you’ve got to take a whooping to move forward.

Father of Jacob Blake’s Remarks Transcript: 2020 March on Washington

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