Jake Gyllenhaal is the one who didnât show
And it was like slow motion, standing there in our tear gas stained clothes, with our phones up, with no one left to blog about. And that was the moment we knew.
You should have been here. And we would have been so happy.
1989 was a year that defined my generation, and Jakey-Jakeâs. I was (redacted) years old at the time, and he was inching toward his ninth birthday when the Berlin Wall fell. That was also the year when famed Black director Spike Lee released his magnum opus, Do The Right Thing - filmed not too far from my block (now you all know where I live). Like every decade in US history, this one had its fair share of racial tensions, and not just in then-derelict boroughs of New York City. It would be just a couple of years until LA County, where Jakey-Jakes resided, would also make history in the worst possible way. We remember these events now because they were foundational, the way the fall of the Berlin Wall was to EU construction, or the Balkans War, a few years later, to the further development of humanitarian action. Gen Y has seen some shit. The question that has been posed this week is whether Jake Gyllenhaal has seen this aforementioned shit as it was right before his eyes.Tensions escalated between communities as well, aggravated by police misconduct. It started with the killing of Latasha Harlins, but quickly became more than that.
On the evening of March 3, 1991, Rodney King and two of his friends were driving down I-210 through the San Fernando Valley. The highway patrol attempted to pull them over, unsuccessfully, which led to a high speed chase when King exited the Foothill Boulevard. He then drove through residential neighborhoods and stopped by the Hanson Dam rec center. He was pulled over by both CHP and LAPD.The two passengers in Rodney Kingâs car were placed in the cop car, while five officers - five - took King aside, tasered him and, according to a 1993 account given to the New York Times, struck him dozens of times with side-handled batons, kick stomped him in his back and tackled him to the ground before handcuffing him and hogtying his legs. During the trial, LAPD claimed he was under the influence of PCP, leading King to resist arrest and becoming violent toward the officers. This was not proven, and drug tests came back negative.
What the LAPD didnât know is that, even in 1992, people knew to film instances of police brutality: a bystander released a tape that was 12 minute long, and violent to the point that even the LAPD chief said he âstared in disbeliefâ at the actions of his officers. The officers were charged with assault and excessive use of force; a jury that comprised no Black individual, and was in majority white, acquitted all but one of the officers of all charges. It could not reach a verdict on the fourth one. Jury selection matters. The riots began on the day of the verdict. They lasted for 5 days, during which 63 people died, including 9 shot by the LAPD and 1 by the National Guard. This was the last instance the 1807 Insurrection Act was used, before Trump invoked it two days ago.
The day Jake Gyllenhaal decided not to show. We got our eyes on the proverbial door, waiting for him to walk in.The time was ticking, as we combed back through our memory. He said heâd be here.
New York City has seen its fair share of dead bodies lying next to police officers. To jog more recent memory, Ronald Singleton was exiting a taxi in 2014 when officers restrained him on a gurney; he pled for breath and for space, and died of a heart attack. Eric Garner was walking down the street when he was placed in a chokehold and died of suffocation. Akai Gurley was in a stairwell in his building when a lone officer with no reason to be there drew a gun and shot him. In 2015, Miguel Espinal was shot in a park in the Bronx after trying to evade a traffic stop. Felix Kumi was just a bystander during an arrest and was shot. David Felix, a diagnosed schizophrenic, was shot for âbehaving erraticallyâ while he was living in a home for the mentally ill. There are so so many more, that you can find here, or here, or here. Yesterday, the NYPD shot someone on Bergen Street in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
As New York City became the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in March, the world, but specifically NYC, turned to support medical professionals, EMTs, as well as the FDNY, already immensely impacted by respiratory illnesses due to 9/11 and now on the frontlines against the virus. Jake Gyllenhaal released a message of support... to the NYPD. We have blogged about this before, but hereâs the video. While away from the city he could support, he thanked emergency workers and essential personnel... from the NYPD Community Affairs page. The NYPD is not comprised of emergency or essential personnel. This message had no place with the police force. I canât explain this, and Iâm not the only one.
All of you know that. Police killings in the United States are common. The policing of black bodies is common. The way the pandemic has disproportionately affected black communities is known because of lack of access to health care compared to other communities. There are so many books you can read, from Mychal Denzel Smith to Baratunde Thurston, but we know what to do. We know hashtag activism is just one very popular and convenient way to deflect responsibility yet we also know we place the onus on celebrities way too much when it comes to drawing attention. After all, they donât pay their taxes like we do, they donât navigate through airport immigration like we do, and they certainly donât have to worry about flying across the country during a state of emergency, as Jake Gyllenhaal demonstrated. It comes with the territory of being able to buy a life that is different from ours, wherein we have to abide.
The responsibility lies with all of us, and with us, I mean citizens, active members of, not just their respective cities but countries, continents, institutions, and the global world. We have to bear witness to be able to call for accountability; we have to support the less fortunate and those in immediate precarious situations; we must individually become watchdogs for human rights, because our states failed us. Why would Jake Gyllenhaal care? Why would he be impacted? Well, he wants to be political and be seen as such, because it somehow separates him from those who can afford not to be. But he fell down such a rabbit hole by refusing to speak, in his own words, on his own time, about an issue that has affected profoundly and deeply not just his hometown of LA, but his adopted city of New York, my city, the city where we live in fear, the city where we grieve, sometimes aggressively so, and always with a slice, but do so nonetheless. He chose to mute, to remain silent. He did not amplify black voices, despite appropriating black culture; he did not share content, despite having enough lawyers draw his attention to it; he did not join a protest, despite blackface Ariana Grande even marching through Beverly Hills. He remained silent, and when called out for it, shared a message from a Black woman... to Black people.
Because the onus is on us now, apparently. What this message said was not just trying to appraise the validity of the blackboxing, which is still controversial and that I still believe is useless, if not dangerous; it said that he would not speak, that he would not act, and instead, instructed people of color to do so.
Now I just wanna be alone, and my friends follow me. This trainwreck was in slow motion. He will probably call in later, to say âIâm sorryâ, and we will say, âIâm sorry tooâ; and that will be the moment we knew.
