the video does not lie

"do you really see what you think you're seeing?" 

from all that i have read in articles about mike brown and eric garner and countless others in the past four months and forever, from all that i have heard from friends and strangers alike, from all that i have seen in protest, and from all that i have been trying to research about the power of media in modern day human interaction, i found myself halted at that question, which i read in a huffington post article presupposing the non-indictment of this officer a few days ago. "do you really see what you think you're seeing?" that is the angle by which the jury is approached in the case of eric garner. that is the angle with which the witnesses were discredited in the case of mike brown. and i do not say "case" freely, purposelessly. because these are cases to be tried, and, to be true, are worthy of, at the very least, a fair trial. 

i have served as a juror in a few difficult cases, and in each of those cases, the knots in my stomach and the sleepless nights all came from the feeling that, although i understood the evidence presented to me, understood what i heard and what i saw and what i thought to be true, i was made to believe, by the verbiage of the law, that my eyes were deceiving me, that i was thinking of it all from the wrong perspective, that my vantage point was somehow skewed at an unfavorable angle. 

"the video does not lie." that man was killed, literally, at the hands of another man. that young man was left lying lifeless in the street for hours. those videos are not of a time to be in black and white, but at the same time, they are. my perspective is not skewed. my eyes do not lie about that.