What A Week
This week has been trauma-filled, and I hope you have been taking purposeful steps in balancing the need to show up and support your communities while also prioritizing your mental, emotional, and physical health.
Between Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo, Army Lt. Caron Nazario, and Deandre (the Black man assaulted on a neighborhood walk), every day this week has been tumultuous.
But then to have to wake up and cap off the week to learn about yet another mass shooting……..nothing about this country is safe, nothing about this country implies that it cares about the well-being of its citizens.
This country has a sick rot in it’s underbelly and it festers as our weak public officials stand in the shadows and pretend they are just as helpless as we are.
We deserve better.
Adam was 13 years old.
Daunte was a father. Sitting in the car beside his girlfriend, 20 years young and free.
Deandre lived in that neighborhood he was taking a walk in.
Nazario serves our country.
And even if none of those things were true, or none of that information was known, these human beings deserved to be treated with a lot more dignity and respect than they were given.
But the common denominator is that no matter your career, your age, your family connections, your heartbeat……as long as you are a in a Black or brown body…..well, you are dispensable.
Today I am thinking of those who were taken from us and those whose dignity was stripped away by white supremacy, policing, and audacity.
Today I am also thinking of the victims of the Indianapolis shooting at FedX. Beautiful lives that were taken away by something our government has the power to control but is too apathetic, too weak, and too broken to do anything about. As we speak, many of them are already campaigning for reelection, while problems they promised to fix, still remain.
Again, we deserve better.
cover photo via https://unsplash.com/@onthesearchforpineapples