Running between place to place, checking twitter and the news with a twisted feeling in my stomach and a partially crushed soul, I really appreciated reading my dear friend Kumar’s short, stark reflection on the murders of the last few days, and his restatement of what should not need to be said, in 2016, but absolutely, desperately, urgently does: Black Lives Matter.
Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, Amadou Diallo, Eric Gardner, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Jamar Clark, John Crawford III, Walter Scott…and the count stretches back and back and forward and forward.
Find a system, politician or organization to pressure for reform. State sanctioned racism and state sanctioned racism are nothing new, but the cameras are. We watch with jaws open and eyes full of tears but our voices and pens stay silent. Watching unarmed black people being killed with your tax dollars should serve as a stark reminder that we are all supporting the systems that perpetuate these patterns.
Find that voice or uplift those around you that have been silenced.
Stories and stats from those fallen in 2015, http://mappingpoliceviolence.org/unarmed/.
The Leftern Wall 