What is a picket but a sharpened stick? And what is a picket fence but a declaration of ownership, a winning smile revealing a mouth full of fangs.

The lines we draw, the picket fence, the parcels of land, the city block, the national border do not require a castle wall when they have the power of the state to enforce the rights of property owners. Or the “castle doctrine” which legalizes the right to kill in defense of one’s property.

It is not coincidental that the right to vote in the United States was originally granted not to white men, but to white men who owned property. As the scholars David Correia and Tyler Wall wrote:

“People do not have an unalloyed right to kill, but property owners do. Property relations are violent relations, and property has always been a racialized category….The elite fear the destruction of their property, yes, but even more they fear the destruction of the social relations that make private property possible.”

And so 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis can be shot for turning down the wrong driveway. 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, can be shot for knocking on the wrong door. And 17-year-old Trayvon Martin can be killed for walking where a man with a gun judged he shouldn’t be, an act sanctioned by Florida’s Stand Your Ground law.

You are Now in Range.

No Warning Shots Will Be Fired.

Is there life after death? Trespass here and find out…

—TEXT FROM “SHOCKWAVE DELAY”

by Yoshiko Chuma & the School of Hard Knocks

La Mama, New York, NY June 2023