Justice For Angelo Quinto
Justice For All
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. I wish good health upon all my peoples living with mental health conditions and salute mental health workers of all types. May is also Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, so a super intersectional shout goes to APIA folk living with mental health conditions. May your May be better than the last. Let’s check in again in July, when it’s Minority Mental Health Month.
On December 23, 2020, Angelo Quinto, a 30-year old Filipino American Navy veteran from Antioch, California, was suffering from a mental health crisis. His family called the police. Antioch PD arrived to the home, leading to a confrontation in which one officer knelt on Angelo’s neck for nearly five minutes while another officer restrained his legs. His last words before losing consciousness were “please don’t kill me.” He died 3 days later.
Reporting on the fatal encounter made it as far into mainstream feeds as this New York Times article in February. An awareness raising campaign was launched by the family and community, including an Change.org petition with currently over 60,000 signatures. A community letter was drafted addressing the Antioch mayor, city council and police chief with community demands. It has since been signed by over 170 organizations. Antioch PD has rejected the Angelo’s family’s claims, though George Floyd’s last May in Minneapolis and a string of knee-to-kneck asphyxiation deaths by Bay Area police have been documented before and since Angelo Quinto’s death.
Police killings are nothing new. For every high-profile case, hundreds of others never make the headlines. And among those, rarely does mental health enter the conversation, even though 25% of all fatal police encounters involve a victim with a mental health condition.
My Beatrock Music family, led by Faith Santilla & Nomi (Power Struggle), put a call out to the crew to amplify Angelo’s family’s story and the community’s organizing efforts. A three-song EP—Justice For Angelo Quinto, Justice For All!—was released earlier this month, featuring tracks from myself, Bambu, G Yamazawa & Power Struggle.
The song I ended up contributing was the 2nd iteration of a song that initially channeled familiar emotions: anger, frustration, grief. It didn’t feel right. As I learned more about Angelo’s life as an artist, his struggles with mental health and how he used painting and visual art to process and heal, I recalibrated. Anger, frustration and grief were the armor I used to shield trauma, hopelessness, loneliness in my art. It’s showed in most of the music I’ve released previously. I scrapped most of the verse I had started and went in another direction. This is an armor-less song, one of the most difficult I’ve ever recorded.
You can stream/download the whole EP on the Beatrock Music Bandcamp page:
Blue Dream
the pills used to work and now they don’t
they wanna double up the dose I said no
shoving hope inside our throat hoping that we choke
if we don’t then it’s time to bring the rope
mood swing blue dream tryna do things
paranoia feeling like the truth is on a shoestring
loose ends allergy to groupthink who am I to judge ?
we just wanna feel like be we belong
got a lot of virtual friends but feel alone
drowning in your feed on some dead sea scrolling
in a whole polarized landscape we looking for some changes
moms used to call it high blood when we anxious
“hurt people hurt people” so they said
but hurt people often the first to hurt themselves
they don’t see no difference from legitimate threats
to a citizen in need of some help
we were all taught not to talk about mental health
kept it like a secret family helpless under siege
well intentioned saying that depression is a rich man’s disease
but we aint ballin so what that mean to me ?
no wonder we don’t talk about it
that stigma gon follow you to your grave
when they find out about it
they gon justify your murder cause you represent a glitch
they rather nix than try fix like
they’ll be fine without us
what happens when the market grow unfettered ?
telling us go work through the trauma we inherit
hustle boat left now it’s sinking some will go down with it
but the rest of us reaching our limit
irrational world tryna tell us that we lazy maybe
or maybe the world the one who’s crazy
I’m done campaigning using other people’s names
sayin the same things for like seven albums straight
from Antioch to any block you see a darker face
veteran or not get erased and replaced
why they sending out killers to do a healer’s job ?
then they wonder why we scared of those
who say they keep us safe
Angelo, I see you in me
both our biggest fears being death and police
may you rest in peace
shout to all my fam who’s in the streets
they killed us in our homelands forcing us to leave
now they tryna kill us where we work where we eat
where we meet where we try to raise our kids
they’ll even run up in your crib
welcome to America:
live in fear die in grief
all we tryna do is breathe x 2
old heads time to fall back and let em lead
all we tryna do is breathe x 8
Shout to all the Beatrock Fam who performed, and especially the folks on the team on the ground and behind the scenes linking our cultural work to organizing spaces and media.
For folks who missed the live stream of the Beatrock Music-hosted live streaming JUSTICE 4 ANGELO event, it’s been archived (embedded above) and you can watch it on Youtube. Like Bambu said in “Homicide”:
it’s closer to home when it’s one of your own
but when the enemy’s the same we should not fight alone