An Ode to George and Fabel: Reflecting on Police Brutality Across the Globe
This week’s feature for Ars Poetica’s Writing Series for BIPOC Voices is written by Emily Joy Meneses. All pieces within the series have been curated by Shakilya Lawrence.
CW: death, violence, police brutality, sexual assault
George Floyd. Fabel Pineda.
Two lives, oceans apart — but more connected than you could begin to imagine.
Photo by Logan Weaver on Unsplash
In May, protesters around the globe took to the streets to collectively mourn the loss of yet another Black life. Here in Los Angeles, we gathered every evening at sunset, the heat-soaked sidewalks seemingly shaking beneath our demands for change. Overnight, conversations of police abolition, decolonization, and the undoing of centuries of violence and corruption made their way into the mainstream.
Several days into the protests, I stumbled across a photo from my family’s homeland, the Philippines. It depicted a group of protestors lined up on the streets of Quezon City, taking a knee to honor George Floyd: a quiet moment of resistance and solidarity stretched across thousands of miles. This was the moment that led me to begin bridging the parts of myself that had for so long remained separate — the physical part of me that stood on American soil, and the inexplicable, visceral part of me that felt pulled to my ancestors’ land.
Though I was born in America, I understand that the people of the Philippines are not strangers to violence. From the days of Spanish colonization to the era of U.S. imperialism to the current regime of Rodrigo Duterte, these individuals are all too familiar with brutal systems of policing and punishment.
But what does this have to do with the U.S.? And how is this connected to George Floyd?
You are probably aware that George Floyd’s death was not an isolated incident. Rather, it’s indicative of a much larger problem in the U.S. — a deep-seated, systemic issue of racism and abuse of power. Beyond that, it’s important to note that America’s tendency to abuse power is not limited by borders; its grip reaches far, far beyond, into countries like my family’s: countries like the Philippines.
Several weeks after the headlines of George Floyd flooded the media, another name came to the surface: Fabel Pineda. Fabel was a fifteen-year-old girl who was raped and killed by two policemen in San Juan, Ilocos Sur, a municipality in the Philippines. Following her rape, Fabel visited a police station in nearby town Cabugao to file her case, and upon leaving, she asked police to escort her home. They refused, and on her way home, Fabel was shot and murdered in an ambush killing.
Like George Floyd’s unjust death, Fabel’s murder represents a systemic problem: a problem of impunity, a problem of unchecked power, a problem of patriarchal violence. Fabel’s case is not separate from George Floyd’s; it is irrevocably tied to it.
The truth is that the U.S. police department and the Philippine National Police are both rooted in America’s affinity for dominion and oppression. The U.S. police department is a direct product of slavery, and the PNP was born from the constabulary created by the American colonial government in 1901; and it remains funded by the U.S. to this day (Amado Guerrero, Philippine Society and Revolution). Both departments reflect how policing as we know it was created not to protect but rather, to control.
So what does this mean for us — knowing that our tax dollars go to not only the police officers brutalizing people on our soil, but also to police officers brutalizing people in countries oceans away? This is something I think about every day: whether those in power, both here and overseas, are fated to abuse it; whether the answer is to somehow strip that power away for good.
Some people think it’s too idealistic to want to abolish the police. They think it’s unrealistic to imagine a cop-free world — a world where Black, brown, queer, femme, and otherwise marginalized bodies are not policed for merely existing. They attribute cases like George Floyd’s or Fabel’s to “one bad cop”, failing to acknowledge the police department’s violent roots — the roots that bred that “one bad cop” in the first place.
Prosecuting one or two cops will not bring back George Floyd, or Fabel Pineda, or Breonna Taylor, or Tony McDade, or Sarah Grossman, or Atatiana Jefferson, or Sandra Bland, or the countless others who fell victim to police brutality over the years. And though the prosecution of an individual cop can bring a momentary sense of justice, the violence will continue to fester, and the list of names will continue to lengthen until the system as a whole is analyzed and dismantled — on both a national and global scale.
“What I can say with certainty is that we must think as radically as possible — there simply is no other way.”
When I saw the photo of Fabel — the photo of a young girl, still discovering herself and her identity; a young girl still exploring what it means to be a woman — I thought to myself, She looks like me. And perhaps a similar thought went through your mind when you saw the story of George Floyd, or Trayvon Martin, or Andrés Guardado, or Oluwatoyin Salau…perhaps you saw yourself in one of these individuals and thought to yourself, It could have been me.
But it wasn’t — and somehow, like me, you’re still here, trying to grasp some semblance of an answer amidst the injustice that surrounds you, trying to find meaning despite the nonsensical and unfair nature of it all.
After all of this learning and unlearning, I still don’t have a clear answer…and I’m not sure that I ever will. But what I can say with certainty is that we must think as radically as possible — there simply is no other way. And as Angela Davis stated: “Radical simply means ‘grasping things at the root.’” I hope that these reflections can help identify those roots; the origins of the injustice that we see globally today.
I hope that together, we can begin to uproot these violent systems and, slowly but surely, plant the seeds of a different reality.
I hope that we can do this work as if our lives depended on it because they most certainly do.
Most of all, I hope, in my idealistic way, that the George’s and Fabel’s of the world can one day live in peace.
Based in Los Angeles, California, Emily Joy Meneses is a freelance writer and musician who’s passionate about culture, art, and collective care. You can explore her poetry, soundscapes, and short stories on her website: emilyjoymeneses.com.
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