During this time of national home-dwelling, people have paid attention to George Floyd, Ahmaud Aubrey, and Breonna Taylor. It is long past time we had a reckoning of the police violence, and by extension white violence against black people. We are not the nation we say we are and that internal struggle will rend individuals apart much as it seems to be rending nation apart. We can no longer live in a nation where black people make up 13% of the general population but compose 67%+ of the prison population; no longer live in a world where your ZIP code, especially if you're black determines will almost unerring precision your destiny in economics and incarceration.
There must be a larger movement in communities large and small to reign in the occupying police forces and replace them with partnering order-keepers. The heartbreak of seeing my city under curfew was somewhat alleviated by seeing a few police departments march with protesters. Let's have all of our municipal constabularies do such work. An officer who can say 'we agree with you, and we will be accountable to our public' will have much more moral authority than a force that dresses up in combat gear and initiates confrontation with the public they've sworn to serve.
If our police forces continue to show and initiate violence towards the people they're sworn to protect, I suggest that anyone organizing the protest find out what their second amendment rights are and open-carry whenever possible. At this point, there is no need for violence, nor to make the first move, but we've all seen how beholden the white supremacist state is to angry people with guns. Be polite, be professional, but don't let anyone push you around - I'm paraphrasing the Mattis quote.
The other thing that we must do is stop making viral images of black people dying. There are a couple of
good articles by better writers than I that make this point, read them. While we're on the point of reading, make sure to read _
White Fragility_. This will help even though it's hard.
I wish I was sad about the looting and burning, but I'm not. I'm not sure I can blame anyone that understands/has lived with 400+ years of black labor exploitation for the looting that occurred. At this point, it's barely a drop in terms of recompense of what has been stolen from black people.
Ways to support black people:
- Buy from black-owned businesses. Here's a link to an LA version of that directory. A simple web search should find something similar where you live.
- Donate at least to the following three places:
- https://www.gofundme.com/f/georgefloyd
- https://action.justiceforbreonna.org/sign/BreonnaWasEssential/
- https://www.gofundme.com/f/i-run-with-maud
- Before you call the cops on anyone, watch this.
- Be a better human, and don't let this initial burst of energy wane. Keep going, this is a marathon.
