Jacob Blake says watching protests after shooting was ‘out of body’ experience
Jacob Blake, the Black man shot seven times by a white Kenosha police officer, said that watching racial justice protests born out of the incident was an “out of body” experience.
In an interview with CNN published Sunday, Blake told reporter Omar Jimenez that he was in shocked to see people in the streets after he was shot protesting police brutality against Black people.
“I can’t really explain the feeling…it was out of body. I felt like I was floating for a while, watching everything happen,” Blake told Jimenez “It blew my mind that they were that mad about it, that people care about it, that they care about me.”
Blake was shot about one year ago by officer Rusten Sheskey during an arrest. Blake suffered injuries that left him paralyzed but he has vowed to be able to walk again. He said he took his first few steps this past week during his son’s birthday party following months of physical therapy.
“Yeah, I’m here, and yeah I’m about to be walking, but I really don’t feel like I have survived because it could happen to me again,” Blake said. “I have not survived until something has changed.”
His shooting set off days of violent protests last summer in Chicago and Milwaukee during which a Kyle Rittenhouse, a white man, shot two demonstrators in the street. Blake said that attack left him “furious.”
“For the reasons they said they shot me, they had every reason to shoot him, but they didn’t,” Blake said. “Honestly if his skin color was different, and I’m not prejudiced or a racist, he probably would have been labeled a terrorist.”
The protests following Blake’s shooting were among a host of demonstrations across the country demanding the end to police-involved shootings of unarmed Black people.
Blake shared that his most painful recent experience was during the fourth of July weekend when he had an anxiety attack due to a fireworks show.
“I’m hearing these booms [fireworks] and it’s not scaring me because I got shot, it’s scaring me because all of those people have gotten shot so every time a boom went off, I’m kind of imagining people dying,” Blake said.