Buffalo, A Foreseen Tragedy

This past weekend, on May 14th, an 18-year-old gunman by the name of Payton Gendron, of whom has had a clear and concise social media history filled with bigotry and pro-white supremist tainted posts, traveled nearly three hours to Buffalo, New York, entered an area of the city where the population is approximately 85 percent African American and opened fire at a popular grocery store named Tops Friendly Market.

To me, this is a clear case of domestic terrorism and white supremacy. It hurts—when I first saw news break of the shooting, I had just arrived at my house to spend the day with my mother, do my laundry and get some homework done away from my college dorm. As I took in and legitimately processed the words and images I was viewing on activist Shaun King’’s Instagram feed, I broke down into tears. The disturbing aspect of my breakdown is that my tears indeed do contain sadness, but they’re filled with more anger than grief these days after what I’ve witnessed in my short 20 years of life.

I had to initially take a few days to speak out on this sickening event, even though I knew I wanted to. I felt what I like to call “the itch” come back to me after a long time of social media silence. I’ve always wanted to use my voice for change—I’ve always had a burning passion for speaking out against injustice. I only truly found that voice during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and I have been highly vocal ever since up until a few months ago. This was due to the fact that I became hopeless, I became numb. Growing up in a world where chaos is the narrative that surrounds you during a highly transitional period of your life can desensitize anybody. This has been my reality and it had enveloped me into a deep silence but, sometimes one can grow so numb that it causes frustration, and that frustration can re-kindle into that flame, that passion. This is what Buffalo did in my heart this past weekend.

I took to my Instagram to post my thoughts on Buffalo, and decided to kick off my slide of pictures with a photo of my grandfather, William Massey, a black man from Lancaster, South Carolina, in his U.S. Air Force uniform, and there’s a very specific reason for this—it has to do with my demand for the American government regarding the Buffalo travesty.

Here it is: U.S. government, you had more than enough time to snuff out this killer before he could do any harm and you have more than a sufficient enough budget within your intelligence agencies to track down psychopaths just like him. My grandfather fought your war of greed in Vietnam, forced to commit the very crimes you did against him that drove him to enlist in order to escape, overseas and served the rest of his military career not six hours from Buffalo in Plattsburgh, New York. This was for the purpose of the preservation of your “freedom”, only for you to slap him in the face after already not granting him the very freedom you speak of, as he was a product of the segregated South, by allowing his sisters and brothers of his same complexion to perish at the hands of white supremacy and racial violence. If you don’t start putting action to your empty, hypocritical words, myself and others just like me are rising—we’re coming for a seat at the table, because if you don’t make a change, we will. We are the next generation—we’re voting now, we’re receiving higher education, and constantly growing in our intellectual prowess. Your future and the fate of your careers are in our hands. Do better. We’re sick and tired.

According to writers Harsha Panduranga and Emil Mella Pablo within their article, Federal Government Social Media Surveillance Explained on the website Brennancenter.org, the Brennan Center for Justice’s website, “FBI agents can monitor public social media postings even without opening an assessment or other investigation. Various components within DHS, including the Office of Intelligence & Analysis, also monitor social media, aiming to identify potential threats of violence or terrorism.” It’s that easy. There’s something within the intelligence world and specifically the FBI called, a type of inquiry, called an “assessment” and according to Panduranga and Pablo, "if they [FBI agents] have an ‘authorized purpose’ like preventing crime or terrorism,” they can do this swiftly and efficiently. Yet according to my research and the quote above, FBI agents and DHS (Department of Homeland Security), can carry this out without even acting through that type of an inquiry. Again, it’s that easy. This article was published this past February in 2022. This is recent and up to date information.

If the Federal Bureau of Investigation has this type of power, to the point where people question if their level of surveillance violates ethical and civil rights morals, then why aren’t they using them. I mean they sure are using them on BIPOC folk, not just today, but all the way back to when the FBI brutalized and murdered in cold blood various Black Panther Party leaders such as the famed Fred Hampton through surveillance; even before the age of social media where surveillance mainly takes place might I add.

According to New York Times columnists Troy Closson, Eduardo Medina, and Jack Healy, Gendron had, “180 pages of hate-filled writings”, across his social media. They pushed and promoted the idea that, “white Americans are at risk of being replaced by people of color.” Deena Zaru writes in her ABC News article on the shooting entitled, Buffalo supermarket mass shooting: What we know about the alleged gunman, “the suspect…appear[ed] to outline a plan for his alleged attack, including time and place, and [wrote] that he chose his location because there is a high concentration of Black people in the area.” This is an ample amount of evidence for even a DHS worker let alone an FBI agent, to have been able to flag Gendron’s posts on social media for domestic terrorism.

Let us remember the 10, beautiful souls whose lives were lost at the hands of bigotry and hate— rest in power Ruth Whitfield, Aaron Salter, Katherine Massey, Celestine Chaney, Deacon Heyward Patterson, Roberta Drury, Andre Mackneil, Marcus Morrison, Pearl Young, and Geraldine Chapman-Talley. Let us fight for change for their families, their friends, their community, for a people group whose been beaten down yet continues to fight and rise for over 400 years now. Some say, as a rebuttal to those such as myself who advocate for black lives, that slavery is in the past, and racism is an entity of America’s history, yet clearly, we can see that prejudice is alive and well—it is our present, but if I and hopefully others have anything to do with it, it will not be our future.

Let’s continue to rise, I know I’m going to, because I’m just too woke to stay silent.

If you visit my Instagram page, @liamjmassey, there’s a link in my bio with multiple ways to donate to the community of Buffalo. Healing is where it starts. I love you all.