Slam Poet Makes Devastating Mad Lib About Police Brutality
It only took two minutes for this slam poet to sum up the devastating emotions that are involved with police brutality, and the interesting part was that she did it through Mad Libs.
Charlotte Abotsi performed a poem called “Mad Libs: Black Death Edition” at the 2016 Women of the World Poetry Slam. During her performance, she placed accents on how unfortunately frequent black deaths are occurring alongside the police by delivering police reports, news articles, and Facebook statuses are sound too familiar at this point. All you had to do was fill in the blanks.
That’s how she started her video. “Fill in the blanks for the police report.”
“At approximately ‘time,’ on ‘date’, officer ‘Proper Noun’ of the ‘Proper Noun’ Police Department, ‘verb,’ and killed ‘Proper Noun,’ an unarmed black ‘noun.’ Officer ‘Proper Noun’ stated self-defense. Said he was frightened, fear overtook him, and he thought he saw a ‘noun,’ or a ‘noun,’ or a ‘noun’.”
She continues to break down the unfortunate, foreseen endings to all of these stories to which we’ve continuously become accustomed: the announcement that the officer will not be indicted, the victim’s name becomes a hashtag, the protesters and their critics who say “they’re acting like animals.” Worst of all, she talks about the mothers and fathers who have to learn to cope with the loss of their child, in the midst of national, regional, and local unrest.
“God, you took my baby. You made a hashtag of that name. They feared my baby. Why?”
Watch the video below, and let us know what you think.
(Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)