Update 8 June 2020: I wrote and posted this on the 5th, and my WordPress dashboard listed it as “Public”. The post failed to appear on my blog until today, however, and that was after I fussed with it a lot. I know I probably shouldn’t read anything into it, but I have made a mental note. And now a literal note. Also, this: Minneapolis City Council members intend to defund and dismantle the city’s police department!
I’ve done something very bad. Something very, very bad.
I’m not anyone special, and I don’t have a big voice, but that doesn’t make it okay to be silent. The truth is, every time I’ve gone to write something for the past couple of months, something else has knocked me off my feet again. Most of it was beyond my control. But this isn’t.
There are things I can actually DO, and that we can do collectively, and some of these things actually work. Rethinking and restructuring the way we enforce our public laws is working. Even the ever-controversial affirmative action appears to be working*.
But no one’s going to do it if we don’t facilitate action. And we’re doing a shit job of that.
We can find the words. We have some ready to go, and we can use them again and again and again and again: Black lives matter.
Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter.
Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. They matter. They fucking matter.
You probably feel like that’s something that shouldn’t need to be said. But apparently it does.
Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter.
*In my experience, the only places where affirmative action isn’t working are the places where they aren’t actually doing it.
P.S. Black lives matter.