An Act of Unity (2021)

In An Act of Unity, a multiracial and multicultural group of Americans band together to let the world know that Black Lives Matter, and getting to the root cause of the disparity in police shootings will likely save their own lives as well. In 2015, the Washington Post established a police shooting data base. They began to log every fatal shooting by an on-duty police officer in the United States. In the ensuing six years, The Post reported more than 5,000 such shootings. After Michael Brown, an unarmed Black eighteen year old, was killed in 2014 by police in Ferguson, Missouri, the Washington Post delved deeper. Their investigation found that the FBI under counted fatal police shootings by more than half. Black Americans were, and are, conspicuously being shot out of proportion with the thirteen and a half percent of the USA population they represent. The short film An Act of Unity, shows that people in the USA recognize that the more they resemble Black Americans, physically and socioeconomically, the more likely they are to be "killed by cop." The act of unity the demonstrators chose to honor Michael Brown's life, shows the participants are, to quote Howard Beal in Network (1976) "Mad as hell and they are not going to take it anymore."