Words wash over me. Pictures pierce my heart.
There is nothing I can say that has not already been said. I’m grateful to all who express their heartfelt thoughts about the cause and effects of this raging tragedy called RACISM.
Some of the words that I’ve heard or read tell a story that has been told too often and yet still needs to be told.
Finally a turning point
Catalyst for change
Voices of the unheard
Mobilize, organize, vote
Ignited a flame
Same issues—different trajectory
Nation we ought to be
Acknowledge the anger and hostility
Broken, chaotic, destructive reality
Gaslit by reality
Direct action—spiritual impulse
Psychic toll
Ambient racism
Outrage
Mixed emotions
Reluctant sense of hope
Little ray of hope
More than isolated events
Racism, white supremacy, police brutality
Law and order
“non-violence works in tandem with threats of potential violence” (Carvel Wallace)
“Racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible—even if you’re choking on it—until you let the sun in. Then you see it everywhere.” (Kareem Abdul-Jabar, op ed in the LA Times, May 30)
Whether we see the universal activism spawned by the image of a police officer with his knee on the neck of George Floyd until he dies as a reaction to the inhumanity of the act or an imperative for America’s reckoning about racism, the words written and spoken by those outraged are, indeed, in service to justice.
Gwen Dungy 