Photo by Benjamin ThomsonYesterday evening, in the wake of 37-year-old Alton Sterling’s death at the hands of Baton Rouge police, Brooklyn rapper Joey Bada$$ took to Instagram to write a long and impassioned post on the killing, police brutality, and anti-blackness from the top down. "What the government is doing amongst our people is downright disturbing but not surprising," he wrote. "With all of the conflict and propaganda, I believe they are simply trying to start a civil war within the USA amongst black & white[…] They are literally begging for this to happen so they can kill us off faster using uprising and rebellion as the excuse." He went on to talk about gang conflict and the need for groups to organize and protect communities against police agression: "As black and low income people, I think our gangs need to do a better job at protecting our communities and not assisting in destroying them. Who do we call when the police break the law?"Joey Bada$$ has spoken up about police brutality plenty in his career, not least in the video for "Like Me" at the start of last year.You can read his post in full below:
Follow Noisey on Twitter.A photo posted by joZif BADMON (@joeybadass) on Jul 6, 2016 at 6:14pm PDT