So I wanna talk for a minute 
about human beings and about riots.

This past Monday night 
while we were all sitting there

waiting for that blow that we all knew was coming,

and hoping that we might be wrong
just this one time,

I said on Twitter that the fundamental danger
of a non-indictment is not more riots,

it is more Darren Wilsons.

And that thought struck a chord with a lot of people.

It was linked to more than any tweet I've ever made.

But later on that night,
we saw some things happen in Ferguson.

We saw some unrest,
we saw things that you could call riots;

and when that happened,

a bunch of other people on Twitter
were delighted by the idea

that that heartache and grief and rage
gave them a social media gotcha moment.

"So who's the real danger now,
mister social justice warrior?"

"Ya see all those thugs out there?
You see how <i>you</i> people act?"

"What do you have to say now??"

Well, here's what I think now:

I believe what I said,
now more than ever.

And if you think what happened on Monday 
disproves what I said,

you didn't understand what I was talking about.

I wasn't happy at all about what
happened Monday night.

I hate to see people pushed that far.

I hate to see people's community 
family businesses destroyed.

I hated seeing that.

But I'm also clear that if you ask me 
to weigh one against the other,

we are weighing the destruction of property
against the loss of a life.

And if you value some people's property 
more than the life of a black child,

we're not on the same team.

And regardless of that, for us to even
discuss caring about one or the other

is presenting a false choice because
they're not in opposition to each other.

One is a byproduct of the other.

That unrest we saw Monday night was a byproduct
of the injustice that preceded it.

This is not a choice, 
this is a cause-and-effect relationship.

If you're worried about the effects,
you need to be thinking about the cause.

Riots are a thing that human beings do
because human beings have limits.

We don't all have the same limits.

For some of us our human limit is when 
our favorite team loses the game.

For some of us it's when 
our favorite team wins a game.

The people Ferguson had a different limit than that.

For the people of Ferguson a lifetime of neglect 
and facto segregation and incompetence

and mistreatment 
by every level of government

was not their limit.

When that malign neglect set the stage

for one of their children to be shot down 
and left in the street like a piece of trash,

that was not their limit.

For the people of Ferguson spending 100 days
almost entirely peacefully protesting

for some measure of justice for that child,

and having their desire for justice 
treated like a joke by every local authority,

was not their limit.

And then after those 100 days,

when the so-called prosecutor 
waited until the dead of night

to come out and twist that knife one last time,

when he came out and confirmed once and for all 
that Michael Brown's life didn't matter,

only then did the people of Ferguson reach their limit.

So when you look at what happened Monday night 
the question you should be asking is

how did these human beings last that long 
before they reached their human limit?

How do black people in America 
retain such a deep well of humanity

that they can be pushed so far again and again 
without reaching their human limit?

How do we keep going through this same cycle?

Because that's the thing: it's not just these 100 days.

It's the 100 times this cycle played out 
before Michael Brown.

The thing about that tweet I sent out Monday night?
That tweet wasn't really from Monday night.

I made the exact same tweet 
a year and a half ago about Trayvon Martin

The exact same tweet word-for-word.
All I did was switch out the name.

And that's how sick,

that's how predictable and sick this white 
supremacy Groundhog's Day is that we live in.

You can literally word-for-word have 
the exact same conversation year after year,

and just switch out the name 
of the black child we lost.

There is nothing more exhausting 
or more inhumane

than black america's eternal cycle 
of being shocked but not surprised.

When you have to go through your whole life 
with all your muscles tensed,

waiting for the same blow 
to come again and again,

knowing it will hurt a bit more each time 
precisely because you always know it's coming.

And then you have to teach your children 
how to go through the same cycle,

that's the definition of torture.

Those are not fit living conditions 
for a human being.

So when I see President Obama say he 
has no sympathy for people who destroy a car,

I'm sorry but I do have sympathy for them.

I'm not happy to see them doing it
but human beings have limits.

When I watched that footage of Michael Brown's 
mother out there crushed and heartbroken,

and I see her family talk about 
burning this thing down,

I'm not happy to see that,

but I don't think we should be 
making excuses for that.

I don't think we should be explaining that away.

I don't think there's anything to be ashamed of.

That is real life.

That is what happens when you 
treat human beings this way.

So if you hated what you saw on Monday night,

if you hated seeing those human beings 
pushed past their limit,

you need to do something

about the government and the justice system 
and the institutions of policing

that do not treat them like human beings.

If you watch the news Monday night 
and didn't like the effects,

you need to do something about the cause.

You, I, we need to go out there 
and make this country into a place

where black lives matter.