This is not the editorial that was slated to appear in AL DÍA today. But last night, in Ferguson, Missouri, the decision to not indict Officer Darren Wilson for the killing of 18-year-old Mike Brown, calls for this editorial.

An 18-year-old is dead. The person who killed him will face no charges — not even the charges you or I would face if we hit and killed someone with our car by accident — this fact (no matter any other evidence presented or considered, no matter the arguments) is indisputable. 

Black lives matter.

It is also indisputable that after shooting Mike Brown, the police officers in Ferguson left his body on the street, exactly where he was felled, for four hours. They did not accord him — nor the community and family members around him — the dignity, the humanity, of blanket to cover his lifeless body.

Black lives matter.

More indisputables: Young Black men are 21 times more likely to be shot by police than young white men (according to a ProPublica investigation published October of this year). Cops are rarely charged, even with manslaughter, for shootings that take place while they are on-duty (according to Bowling Green State University).

Black lives matter.

This is not the time to look away from what the Ferguson verdict means. This is not the time to close our eyes to what is happening in cities and towns beyond Ferguson, to young Black men at fatal risk of being shot by police, no matter who they are and what they are doing. 

The fight for justice and against impunity is our fight, and if we have been focused on that mainly in terms of our advocacy for immigrants or for the 43 students disappeared and murdered in Ayotzinapa, it is time (well past time, actually) to widen our view, and see that  injustices intersect. Our calls for justice, our fight for it, must intersect as well. “Injustice anywhere,” the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Black lives matter.

This is the time for us to amplify Black voices: 

“The protests in Ferguson and across the country were never just about Michael Brown. They were about Amadou Diallo, and Trayvon Martin, and Jordan Davis, and Akai Gurley, and the endless list of black men who have died in similar fashion. They were about the long line of mothers who have buried their sons, the scores of fathers who have wept over caskets. The protests were about all of us, and they still are.”

— Solomon Jones, Philadelphia columnist and radio host

“If you think #AllLivesMatter then stop ignoring the oppression & brutality faced by Black communities. If you hear #BlackLivesMatter & can’t stand the focus on the group of people being killed every 28 hours then you’re part of the problem.”

— Mikki Kendall, writer and activist

“The color of our skin, the clothes we wear, the neighborhoods we live in, even the moods we may be in when we encounter law enforcement, should not negate law enforcement’s obligation and responsibility to respect the humanity of every person.”

— Bishop Dwayne Royster, senior pastor and founder of Living Water United Church of Christ in Philly

“From the minute our children are born, they are targets.”

— Rosa Clemente, Black Puerto Rican feminist activist

“We stand against a legal system which prioritizes the rights of certain segments of our society while neglecting and dismissing the rights of the poor, people of color, and other marginalized populations who have a right to a system which holds law enforcement accountable for their actions. We yearn for the day when all communities can trust in law enforcement to be concerned with everyone’s humanity.”

— Statement from POWER (Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower and Rebuild)

This is the time for us to say, as Latinos, as Philadelphians, as Americans: Black lives matter.