Blog Post 5 By Oliver Egger Oppression: Defined in To Kill a Mockingbird and violence and shootings that define us all.

Blog Post 5 By Oliver Egger

Oppression: Defined in To Kill a Mockingbird and violence and shootings that define us all.

Oppression. A word that has defined so much and too much of human history. From Egyptian slaves, to Colosseum killings, to forced conversions, to foot binding, to witch trails, to monarchs with infinite power, to Women-less elections, to Nazis, to minority turned away from lunch counters, burning sky scrappers, a persisting hatred for the Islamic community and of course unfair racism defined trails and cops killing unarmed African-Americans in broad daylight. Oppression was my motif and it is infinitely broad topic, with infinitely broad branches off of it. Its complex and characterized with millenniums of hatred not always documented in best selling novels or front page articles plastered upon shop windows. I was thinking of what to say and how I could pick out one bit of oppression in a year that seems to be so filled with it. I gazed through the news and through the words of my peers. It ranged from reverse racism, to school dress codes, to Donald J. Trump,  (Isn't he just the best?) to school shootings, to gun violence, to ISIS, to unacknowledged genocides, to Americans closing the doors on drowning innocent Syrians and the lingering racism in our country leaving the African Americans ostracized from society with bullet holes and injuries bestowed by the people who are supposed to protect them. I decided what I could do to solve this heartbreaking problem was to go online and find one truthful piece of oppression and see how this related the fictional oppression in To Kill a Mockingbird. What I saw instantaneously was the Laquan McDonald killing which if you have gone on the internet or clicked on the news over the past two weeks you've most likely, maybe even unconsciously  heard about this tragic case. A young black man was again shot and killed by a police officer several times,  which was then covered up by the corrupt police department  leading to destruction and hiding of security footage and in the end he should not have, by any means, had his his life stripped from him in this unlawful fashion. His life was unrightfully pried from his hands and in end his execution was not fair, he was never given the rights to a trail or to have his life last longer than seventeen years. In the end he was another black man with seventeen bullet holes who could have been forgotten in the concrete. Strangely he was not because the judge said the footage should be publicly released which helped make Laquan's case a case that wasn't drowned in the concrete sea of other undocumented oppressions.  What was wrong in this case is obvious. What should have happened did not involve pistols and final words, in fact what should have happened was that the police office, Jason Van Dyke should have paused and thought before acting. The man was not attacking him or anyone else. Jason should have taken a deep breath and acted accordingly to what he knows is truly the right thing but sadly that never occurred and Laquan is dead because of that. Whats even more tragic about this story is that I didn't say "oh my god!" like I said in the previous unexplained and unreasonable deaths but now all I said was, "oh again." and that is tragic because these events are so common we don't even think twice about them. This is exactly like To Kill a Mockingbird. In the trail Tom Robinson is found guilty and then killed and the white people aren't even surprised  about this "senseless" killing because in the end its the norm. On page 323 Scout says it the best, " Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed." That is where the true tragedy and oppression lies, "in the secret courts of men's hearts." The people who charged Tom didn't think and neither did the ones who shot him from the sky, they did it because thats was the norm. For the real man, Mr. Jason Van Dyke, killing a black boy is the norm and for the fictional men of Maycomb, Alabama, that is the norm. The oppression is engulfing and terrible and in the end Tom and Laquan shouldn't have died the way they did. If the people sitting on that jury had actually taken a deep and acted accordingly to what they knew was truly right, then maybe they could have given a dire victory to the battle against falling into oppression and hatred, which is a battle we as people are losing. Its time together as we people that we take a deep breath and act.