#i heard them talking about george floyd one time..it was rough

[hobbithoes]

my coworkers r all republicans who hate me

#when i try to talk to them they’re like ..... 😐🤨 #like OKAY ill talk to myself then #like i used to be rlly bad but now im nit im just kinda slow at stuff sometimes?? and i apologize and am so nice to them #stg the cop’s son i work with gave me a dirty look today #like i dont hate the work that much anymore but now im so stressed bc they all hate me lol #i heard them talking about george floyd one time..it was rough #and they all agreed that they werent gonna take covid sriously until someone in their family got it.... #so like..they’re bad ppl but they could at least be nice to meee pla #pls #they’re all around my age too so it’s worse that they hate me JAJSJSJ #i have One coworker who actually likes me but i know her from school and never work with her hrrnnnng #also its gotten worse since i dyed my hair green FMLLLLLLDJDJJDJD

[thedefinitionofendgame]

I Love You, Baby

Sullivan X Andy one-shot | Rated M | Canonverse

A/N: Amidst my Surrera breakdown tonight after reading the episode synopsis for 4x16, I wrote this to settle my heart rate. I have no idea how the Station 19 finale will go, but hints about a Surrera baby are running wild, so this fic inspired by those and everything else *Rated M for non-explicit sex/TW regarding the mention of George Floyd’s death (briefly)*

•

You can read this work on ao3 and fanfiction.net as well

Written & cover by @thedefinitionofendgame (aka me)

The cover is split between 3 different sections, just because :)

Alarms blared and sirens wailed but Lieutenant Andy Herrera heard none of them. Her thoughts were too crowded with her husband’s voice. No, not the way he whispered sweet nothings against her skin in the early mornings or the outrageously sexy way his voice deepened when he fought with her over control in the bedroom. Instead, it was the things he had told her over the last few months when the whole world had flipped upside down. The coronavirus started which put enough strain on a marriage alone. Then Andy’s husband, Robert, and a member of her Station 19 family, Dean, had wound up in jail mainly due to the colour of their skin. Robert had even had a gun pointed at his head, as he rushed to his wife who had been shoved to the ground. Less than two months later, a man across the country had died claiming he couldn’t breathe, filmed for the whole world to witness and make opinions about. None of it made sense to Andy, but then again she didn’t see things in the same way she had just half a year ago before she married her husband.

She loved his eyes. They were kind and held so much emotion. She loved the way his hands held her face when his lips brushed hers, no matter how gentle or rough their kiss was. His firefighter-status fitness level was a definite bonus; his hands were way larger than her own but she liked that they fit around hers like a glove. These were just some of the physical features she loved about her husband. Not once did she think about the colour of his skin and how that affected her love for him. It simply didn’t, at least not in a negative way. Robert was her husband; the colour of his skin never made any difference to her one way or another. Until it did matter, although not in a bad way. Suddenly, he was a target and Andy was thrust into a world that didn’t see a kind and dedicated man when they looked at Robert Sullivan. They saw someone that Andy would never compare to her husband, all for the colour of his skin.

Our marriage is the only good thing in my life, he had told her. The only good thing was her. They both had no one else, no parents or siblings. Sure, they had Station 19 who were basically family and Andy’s aunt, uncle and cousin. But in terms of immediate family, it was just them. Robert’s comment had left Andy’s head turning. Maybe it was the truth in his words, maybe it was the desperation he had said them to her in. Maybe it was because Andy wanted more than just their marriage to be good in his life. And maybe it was a little bit of all three.

Whatever it was, Andy was sure the problems couldn’t be fixed with what she had in mind. Although her idea wasn’t rational, it was the only thing she could think of. Robert and her had talked about the prospect of it before but it hadn’t gotten farther than that. The question remained whether or not it would break them up or make them stronger. At this point, Andy wasn’t ready to find out.

Yet somewhere in the universe, a light shone. A spark was lit, a flame caught on and from there, it was an inferno. One thing led to another and soon a giant ball of fire was heading for the only good thing in Robert (and Andy’s) life. It was only a matter of time before it crashed into them, leaving nothing but a mist of smoke behind.

“Hey, are you okay?” Robert’s concerned murmur washed over Andy, as she slid back into bed next to her husband.

Andy nodded, desperate to feel the warmth of his skin against hers again. The early-morning air was cold and the firefighter wasn’t ready to get up yet. “Just had to use the bathroom.”

“Mhm.” An arm wrapped around her shoulders, making Andy feel safe. Home was wherever Robert’s embrace was. “Some long trip to the bathroom you took. Also did I hear you throwing up?”

Andy’s heart thumped in her chest. “No, why did you think that?”

“Thought I heard it. If you didn’t, it’s fine. Just wanted to check,” Robert pressed a kiss to his wife’s forehead. “We have ten more minutes until the alarm goes,” he informed her.

“So kiss me.” Andy’s reply was quiet but Robert reacted immediately. His lips moved from her forehead to her eyelids, her cheeks, her nose and landed softly on her lips. Andy shifted so that she was more upright, and Robert’s hands moved to cup her face. The kiss deepened, and the sheets soon ended up on the unoccupied side of the mattress.

Morning sex was something Andy hadn’t really indulged in during her hookups with Jack and Ryan. Sure, it was a better way to wake up than turning over and hitting snooze on the alarm but she was mostly concerned about not getting caught by her father or anyone else at the station.

The alarm blared, interrupting the couple’s post-orgasmic bliss. With a sigh, Andy pushed away from Robert and threw on his discarded Station 19 shirt from the night before. “Cereal good for you? I’m not in the mood for French toast which is the-”

“Only thing you know how to make for breakfast, I know.” Leaning back against the headboard. Robert put his hands behind his head and smiled at her. “You tell me every morning.”

“Hey, I’m just reminding you what you signed up for when you married me.” She threw on yesterday’s jeans (her own this time), leaving the room.

“I married you for other reasons besides my breakfast options!” Robert shouted after her. He heard her infectious giggle from the stairs, which made his smile stretch even wider. Andy was going to be the death of him, but he would happily go if it meant the last thing he saw was her. The thought was cheesy, Robert knew, yet that was the state the ex-battalion chief was constantly in around his wife. She brought out a completely different side of him that had been hiding for the years between his first wife’s death and him coming to Station 19.

His first wife was probably watching from whatever afterlife she was in, happy for him. A day didn’t go by that Robert didn’t miss Claire, but he knew she would want him to find happiness again. Lucky for him, Andy was the woman he never expected to fall in love with and he did anyways. He was a very fortunate man to get two loves of his life.

After stretching, Robert rolled out of bed and trekked to the bathroom. Water was splashed all over the counter, which made him shake his head. While his wife kept a fairly clean locker at the station, their bathroom had no idea. He grabbed a small towel off the rack and mopped up the small puddles, then turned on the shower. Taking less than two minutes to get clean, Robert had a towel wrapped around his waist and was brushing his teeth while observing himself in the mirror. Clearly all the workouts he had been doing recently to deal with the emotions he had been feeling were helping tone his figure. Raising an eyebrow at himself in the mirror, Robert let out a laugh. He felt a bit stupid, so he quickly turned off the light, rinsed his mouth in the sink and went to change for the day.

A pair of Andy’s socks showed up in Robert’s drawer, so he opened up her side of the closet to put them away. But before he could move, something solid caught his eye amongst the squishy socks. He was about to investigate, then realized it wasn’t his. It was Andy’s and if he looked, it would be invading her privacy. So he closed the drawer and went back to putting on his own clothes. Yet Robert’s curiosity was piqued and the wheels in his head were already turning with possibilities. A surprise for him, perhaps. Or many it was a female-related object, one that she clearly didn’t want him to know about. Or maybe it was a- “Hey Andy, do you own a vibrator?” The question escaped Robert’s lips before he could stop himself.

Robert had never seen his wife appear in their bedroom so fast. “Robert, what on Earth have you been doing in here?” She asks, alarm lighting up her face.

Feeling like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Robert admitted to what he had seen in Andy’s sock drawer. “Do you own a vibrator?” He repeated, once he had recounted his story to his wife.

Andy let out a huff of laughter, as she turned towards Robert. “Um, I did, before I married you. But it’s long gone, so don’t worry you don’t have any need to get your feather’s ruffled.” She crossed her arms. “Would you have been mad if I did own one?”

“No way, I would’ve suggested we use it to spice up our sex lives even more,” Robert told her.

Andy smacked her husband’s arm, before turning to leave the room again. “You need to get dressed because we gotta go in like fifteen minutes. I got out the cereal.”

“Okay, thanks.” Robert listened to his wife, and joined her in the kitchen for coffee moments later. He offered her the coffee pot, but she shook her head. It surprised Robert as Andy wasn’t one to skip out on caffeine.

Andy could tell her husband was starting to get a bit suspicious, so she made her exit. “Gonna change, then we can go,” she said in a rush, then jogged up the stairs to their bedroom again.

Shutting the door behind her, Andy leaned against it, before sliding to the floor. It was getting a little exhausting trying to keep their teeny tiny surprise a secret, especially from her husband. Not that she wanted to be keeping secrets, but this one was too big to tell him yet. Andy wasn’t ready for him to know. Unfortunately, keeping it from him went against the main slogan of their marriage: no more secrets. Robert had told her that on many occasions, always with a kiss on her lips following. This was an exception, or at least that’s what Andy told herself to make her feel better.

The young woman shed her clothes and put on clean ones, then grabbed her purse and a pair of socks. She turned the hidden object over in her hand once, before slipping it back and smiling to herself. “Baby, you ready to go?”

“Yep, and I have coffee for you to go,” Robert handed Andy the travel mug, which she dutifully took. Hopefully she’d be able to pour the contents down the sink when her husband wasn’t looking.

They got in the car and drove to work. The streets were pretty empty, as it was barely six-thirty a-m. Andy silently prayed people would stay safe today, making their job easier but also keep people living. It also meant Andy wasn’t taking big risks, something she knew she should avoid for the foreseeable future. Robert didn’t think anything was different, as he reached across the center console to take Andy’s hand. She smiled at him, and he pressed his lips to her fingers. They were stupidly in love without a care in the world.

Once they reached the station, the couple changed into their work attire and headed up to the kitchen for their second breakfast. Andy realized she conveniently forgot the travel mug of coffee in the car, and sighed with relief. Except the second they came around the corner, Ben was offering a second coffee to Robert, and extended it to Andy.

“I’m good, thanks Warren,” she said, avoiding Robert’s gaze and scurrying to sit with Maya and Vic at the table. “Hey guys.”

“Hey Andy,” Vic greeted her.

“We were just talking about Pru’s recent development in mobility,” Maya explained.

Babies, Andy thought, I can talk about that. “Is she still doing the butt-scootch thing?”

Vic nodded. “Yep. Dean’s been trying to get her to take a few steps because she’s more than ready. But she’s a stubborn girl.”

It would be awhile longer, but teaching a child to walk was something that thrilled Andy. “I can’t wait for that,” Andy accidentally burst out, before catching herself. “I mean, I can’t wait for Pru to start walking.”

“Same.” Learning back, Vic looked like a proud mother, despite the fact that Pru wasn’t her kid.

Maya waited a second longer, before pushing her chair back as the rest of the A-crew took a seat. “Okay, Montgomery and Herrera, you two are on aid car today. The rest of you guys, make sure the truck’s in tip-top shape.”

After a chorus of ‘yes-es’, the team spread out. Andy and Travis were called to a house regarding someone who choked on a piece of sausage (the Heimlich was performed swiftly and effectively), while the rest of the firefighters were sentenced to putting out a warehouse fire. A machine had caught a spark, which spread to all the wood materials lighting on fire. Not a great combination, yet Station 19 was prepared and managed to evacuate everyone in record time. Maya commanded the radio outside, as Vic, Robert, Jack and Dean did a final sweep. The aid care, with Andy and Travis inside, pulled up just as Maya was about to call her firefighters back. No one was hurt, but it was good to have the care on standby just in case.

The radio crackled, and Vic’s voice rang out. “There’s one more person in here! They’re trapped under a wooden shelf.” Static, then there was a muffled noise, before a shout could be heard. “Dammit!”

Instantly Maya had the radio switched on. “What happened?”

“The fire just lit up the entire back wall,” Vic reported. Andy’s heart beat loudly in her chest, as she feared for her fellow firefighters’ lives, and most of all her husband’s.

“Get the person stable, and then get out,” Maya ordered. “Gibson, Miller, what’s the status on the exit?”

“Clear. The direct path has nothing structural that could fall. But the smoke is thick. We need to start putting out the fire in the main area or else it has the potential to block off where we need to go,” Jack reported.

“Okay, good. Get out and you can help the other stations spray from the windows.” The warehouse luckily had a bunch of windows, which made access to the fire easier. Maya had had the windows smashed in earlier.

“Copy that.” Jack’s radio went muffled for a moment, then two doors opened at the side of the building. “Hey Herrera, Montgomery, nice of you to join us,” Jack said with a laugh. Travis nodded hello while Andy didn’t even look in Jack’s direction. She was too focused on whatever fate her husband had. Recently her emotions and hormones had been all over the place, leaving her wanting to cry one moment and incredibly turned on the next. Right now though, Andy was scared for her husband’s life.

“We got them!” This time it was Robert’s voice on the radio. “Heading for the exit.”

The seconds ticked away as everyone who wasn’t spraying water at the fire, had their eyes on the double doors where they expected Vic and Robert to emerge from. Maya was worried, and turned on the radio again. “Sullivan and Hughes, where are you guys?”

The only answer was static. Andy thought she head a shout but it was too muffled to tell. Then one door pushed open, and she rushed towards it. Vic called out, “Help me grab the guy!”

Andy held open the door as Vic stumbled through it towing a man behind her. She coughed loudly, as the smoke was incredibly thick. Robert was nowhere to be found.

While Travis did his job and checked over the man, Andy turned to Vic. “Where’s Sullivan?” She asked, remembering to use her husband’s proper title since they were at work.

Vic didn’t answer her. Instead she spun around and fixed her helmet back on her head. “I’m going back in there,” she said.

“No you aren’t.” Maya stopped her.

There was panic in Vic’s eyes. “Sullivan is still in there. A huge beam came down just as I was rounding the corner to the exit. Sullivan jumped back just in time, but we were separated. The smoke is so bad, and I had the guy with me. I could see the exit, so I thought I could just drop him off and the go back for Sullivan.”

“You left him?” Andy whirled on Vic.

“No, I couldn’t get to him. I had a civilian and I told him I’d go back. I have to go back,” Vic repeated to Maya.

“No. No one is going back in there.” Maya stated firmly. She picked up her radio and said, “Sullivan, do you copy?”

There was nothing, except for Vic’s voice apologizing. “I’m so sorry, I just couldn’t reach him and I had the civilian and-”

“Nothing. You made the call and it was what was necessary.” Maya attempted to contact Robert via the radio again, with no luck.

Suddenly, there was a huge crash and a section of the warehouse roof began to cave in. Andy watched in horror as smoke billowed out into the sky and there continued to be no response from the radio. “ROBERT!” A scream left Andy’s throat as she lunged herself towards the doors her husband was still trapped behind. Much to her dismay, both Maya and Vic lunged after her, stopping her from charging in after him. She struggled against the women but soon gave up. “Somebody do something!”

Maya shook her head sadly. “It’s up to him to get out, I can’t risk another firefighter. Andy, he’ll be okay.”

“You don’t know that!” Andy was practically in hysterics, which wasn’t like her at all. She was normally pretty put together, even when his life had been in danger before.

Jack came over and looked Andy right in the eyes. “I know he’ll make it out to you. He’s been a firefighter for a long time, and will be fine. Trust him.”

“Okay.” Andy’s voice was small as she nodded. Jack gave her shoulder a reassuring pat, then stood off to the side. He was worried about his friend because she was rarely this emotional while on a call. Sure, she had broken down from time to time, but it was rare for to lose it at the scene. Maybe she and her husband-it was still weird to say that after almost a whole year-had had a fight beforehand, and she didn’t get the chance to work things out.

Water continued to rain down on the building but the radio remained silent. Maya tried over and over to reach Robert with no response. The panic was just starting to settle in, when someone shouted that they saw movement through one of the broken windows.

Inside the building the air was thickening with smoke and Robert was losing air fast. But he had someone to fight for, well two someones actually. He was not about to leave his wife the way his first wife had left him. Claire’s death had almost killed him, and he would do whatever he could to save Andy from losing someone else. Up ahead, Robert saw the exit that separated him from the love of his life. With a last surge of strength, Robert burst open the doors and stumbled a short distance before he fell to the concrete. Cold, fresh air filled his lungs as he took in gasping breaths. He looked up and saw that the sky above him wasn’t smoke but clear and blue with the sun shining too. I’m safe, he thought. I’m safe and I'm alive.

Seconds later, two figures reached him. One was Travis, thrusting an oxygen mask into his hands for him to put on, and the other was his wife. Her arms engulfed him in a hug, and she practically lay on top of him on the ground. At first, Robert thought she was just happy to see him alive and well, then he felt her shaking in his lap. “I’m safe, it’s okay,” he told her, pulling back slightly so he could wipe the tears from her eyes.

“I thought I lost you,” Andy told him, as she pressed the oxygen mask to his face. Travis stepped back and gave them a few feet of space, as the rest of the group worked to spray the flames.

“You’ll never lose me, I’m too stubborn to die,” Robert reassured her.

Andy nodded, but she wasn’t convinced, She was just thankful he had made it back to her, and didn’t leave her all alone to raise their child. “I love you, baby,” she managed to get out.

“I love you.” His words echoed back and he hugged her tightly again. Moments later, Maya appeared at his side, and Andy moved to get up off of the ground. “Hey Captain Bishop, things were getting a bit toasty, huh?”

“Just a bit,” Maya rolled her eyes. “You okay Sullivan?”

“Fine.” The man in question had regained enough oxygen in his lungs and strength in his body, to rise to a standing position.

“You should head over to the aid car and rest; we can debrief later.” Maya glanced around, then leaned over to her fellow firefighter. “Hey, is Andy alright?”

Robert raised an eyebrow. “She’s fine, why?”

Maya sighed. “She acted overly emotional when you were struggling to get out of the building. I totally understand why, but it’s unlike her. I just wanted to make sure things were okay.”

“Oh, I understand.” Pausing, Robert hesitated how to approach the subject of why when he knew Andy didn’t even know he knew about her secret. “I’m sure she was just worried.”

“Right,” Maya said. She didn’t look completely convinced, but luckily thought Robert didn’t get questioned any longer. He made his way over to Travis at the aid car and got his head looked at. It was just a bruise, which would heal in no time.

The fire eventually died down and lost the war against the firefighters and water. Station 19 began to pack up, and Andy came over to give her husband a check up of her own, before getting back into the aid car. Vic apologized profusely to Robert for leaving him, and he told her that he would’ve done the same thing, had he been in her position. As Andy and Travis pulled away, Robert was leaning over to give Vic a reassuring hug; all was okay.

Once they got back, chores needed to be done, then people started heading to the showers or to crash in a bunk room. Andy slipped away and went back to the barn, swinging herself up to sit on the back of the firetruck amongst the many hoses. It had been a long day, even though it was barely eight o’clock. All she wanted to do was go to sleep, with maybe a little loving from her husband first.

Speaking of Robert, his voice carried through the barn as he spotted her. “Hey, can I join you?” He asked.

“Yeah,” Andy nodded, moving so he could come up too. She let out a loud sigh, and ran a hand through her messy curls.

Robert watched her, concern in his gaze. “Everything okay?”

“Today was a close call,” Andy began, looking at her hands instead of her husband. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

Robert wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. “Me too.” There was a moment of silence, until Robert decided it was time to rip off the bandaid. But first, he needed to tell her something. “I love you, you know that?”

Pulling away, Andy snuck a glance at Robert. “Of course, silly. I love you too.”

“Good.” Robert smiled slightly, then bumped her shoulder with hers. “Then I just wanted to tell you that I know.”

Andy whipped her head towards her husband. “You know what.”

“I know. Don’t try to hide it any longer.”

“What do you know.”

“I know.”

“I know you know, but what do you know?” Andy was very stubborn, and was not about to show her cards first.

Robert, who gave into arguments like this with her more often than she did, sighed and told her: “I know about the baby. That you’re pregnant.”

“Dammit.” She looked back down at her hands. “I was trying to keep it a secret for a little while longer. How did you find out? You didn’t look in my sock drawer, did you?”

“No, I wouldn’t invade your privacy like that,” Robert reassured her.

“Then what was it?”

“Well you’ve been acting funny the past couple days. Avoiding coffee, being way more emotional than normal-which there’s nothing wrong with but it isn’t like you normally-and disappearing to throw up at the same time for the past five days. You deny it but I know my wife.”

Shaking her head, Andy let out a sigh. “I can’t keep anything a secret from you.”

“So are you pregnant?” Robert wanted his wife to say it, to confirm his theory.

“Yes, I’m pregnant.” Andy nodded.

Robert didn’t hesitate. He leaned over and pulled his wife into the biggest hug, then began to press sloppy kisses all over her face. She laughed, swatting at him lightly. “I love you so much,” Robert gushed. “And I love you too, baby,” he said, looking down at Andy’s non-showing belly.

Andy took his hand and placed it where their baby was growing inside of her right now. “You’re not gonna want to miss this, ever,” she said.

“Never,” he agreed.

They were quiet for a moment, just breathing together. Then Andy spoke: “Before you tell me to lighten my duties, I planned on talking to Maya later this week. We have a girl’s night in the works, and I need to tell her before she suggests we go to a bar for shots.”

“Didn’t even cross my mind yet, but I’m glad you knew what I was going to ask in the future,” Robert said with a laugh. He pressed another kiss to Andy’s lips, then looked all around him.

“What?” Andy asked, as she watched her husband.

“I was just thinking, this is where it all started. Right here in the barn, when I was introduced as the new captain of Station 19. Who knew that we’d be here now, married with a baby on the way?” He lay back, pulling Andy down with him, and they tangled themselves amongst the folded hoses, snuggled together like they had lay that morning before getting up.

Andy confessed, “Not me. I hated you for a good while, before I realized I was using hate to cover up what I felt for you.”

Robert chimed in, “And I told myself I wasn’t going to fall in love with a firefighter half my rank. Look where that got me.”

“You love me.”

“I do.”

“And we’re going to be good parents, right?”

“The absolute best. First thing we’re going to do is teach them Spanish. After English of course.”

“Okay. Only if I get to teach them how to make French toast because-”

“It’s the only thing you know how to make for breakfast.”

#station 19 #station 19 fanfic #andy x sullivan #andy x sullivan fanfic #surrera #surrera fanfic #andy herrera #andy herrera fanfic #robert sullivan #robert sullivan fanfic #fluff #fanfic on tumblr #the definition of endgame

[kdfrqqg]

Black Lives Matter: Richmond discussions

Hello all!  I’m writing out of my hometown of Richmond, VA, the home of the Confederacy. It has been a rough couple of days here, my boss on Sunday night told us to stay at home due to all of the unrest in the city.  I work right in the heart of the protests but I live in the burbs and we have been relatively untouched with the exception of a few stores closing early around here.

I’ve been having lots of conversations with my friends and family.  It's really hard to make them understand what is happening right now when we are all white.  People who you would think would value everyone continue to find ways to justify George Floyd’s death or discrete the BLM movement.  

For example my mother-in-law told me, “well I heard that he had drugs on him.” My response was, “And how does that justify killing him in custody.”  She got real quiet because it doesn’t.  I don’t care if he had drugs filling his pockets, he should have never been pressed to death like that. If he was a white man, he would have been transported, booked, and released and we would have never heard anything about this man.  Unfortunately, that was not the case and good man lost his life.

My husband even told me, “All lives matter” the other night. I looked at him almost dumbfounded, I told him he just didn’t get it.  Trying to explain to him that of course all lives matter but black lives have been marginalized for so long and that’s what they are trying to bring this to light.  

I tried to explain the reason for the riots to my work best friend.  I gave her an analogy of living in an abusive relationship.  America/police are the abusive husband and black folks are the abused wife.  He hits her, she cries out and the next day he’s buying her flowers and saying he's sorry but she knows that tomorrow or next week she’ll probably get hit again.  One day, he’s going to kill her or she’s going to fight back. Right now the black folks are fighting back, they are pissed off and they don’t care what they mess up.  (By the way, I do understand that there are folks coming into the area of the protests that don’t live there and all they want to do is fuck shit up.  I also understand that there have been reports of undercover officers causing disturbances and the unknown piles of bricks just randomly showing up in protest areas.)

My friend, unfortunately, still seemed to be more upset that the confederate monuments on Monument Avenue had been vandalized than about the movement.  I understand to her point/her side, they are beautiful and historical monuments and when you stand next to one you are in ‘awe’ but them damn things needed to come down a long time ago.  I was excited to hear that the Governor and Mayor are going to try to remove them soon.  They need to go, so that we can have more healing in our communities.  I understand why the monuments were allowed in the first place but the war has been over for years and they only create animosity for so many people.  As a daughter of Union and Confederacy, I support this decision to remove the monuments and start the renaming of schools, roads, etc. 

It’s difficult to explain the level of underlying racism that is a part of our commonwealth from folks who would never consider themselves racists.  These are just some examples that I’ve personally noticed and have tried to address over the last few days.  All of the folks, I have told you about are good, and giving people.  As white people, we have to continue to speak to our white friends and family.  They will not speak this way to their black friends and if they do there is a chance that their black friends won't fight them on it because their families have taught them not to argue with white people. We need to keep talking to them.  Call them out on their bullshit?  I do that to my husband all the time.  He’s a good guy but he can be an asshole too.  That’s fine because I’m a bitch when I need to be.  Don’t back down, it’s going to be hard.  It’s difficult to tell a family member or friend that their thinking is racist.  

Am I perfect? No, overwhelming hell no.  

Do I have racist/biased tendencies? Oh yeah.  

Do I try to understand where those tendencies are coming from? Yes, everyday.  

I can never walk a mile in their shoes but what I can do is empathize, I try to just understand the best I can.  As a writer, I tend to walk through scenarios over and over again until I feel the authenticity of the situation.  That I believe makes it easier for me to feel more in tune with what is going on.  

You will have to make it personal for them.  Many of your white friends only have that token black friend and the BLM movement doesn’t really affect them.  I have recently imagined a number of times, what it would be like to see a good family friend being crushed under the weight of three or four officers on video.  I know a fairly large number of bigger, possibly even threatening looking, black men.  They are all teddy bears and sweet, loving, kind, smart, enthusiastic men.  The descriptions keep coming.  They give the best hugs, sing beautiful songs, hold upper level degrees and love their kids.  Basically, they are George.  

I will leave you with a few questions to ponder: What would you do if, that man that you are visualizing in your head, went through what George went through?  Would you start a movement? Would you pray? Would you change legislation?  

#blacklivesmatter #blm #richmond virginia #RVA

[channelmono]

A lengthy, LENGTHY post on keeping yourself mentally safe AND politically active during this time of racial/political unrest

I wasn’t expecting the need to do another writeup again, but here we are, haha Taking this break day to discuss the NEW giant elephant in the room: the US has flared up in a gigantic racial conflict again after the high-profile death of another black American at the hands of the police. There’s no beating around the bush since everyone’s already talking about it, and if you haven’t heard about it til now (which hey, my analytics say some of you are pretty young, so I wouldn’t blame you), it’s been a greatly aggressive mess that everyone is feeling the pressure of getting involved in. Now, I usually don’t like getting publicly political, but that doesn’t mean that I as a creator am not a political person. Far from it; the moral matters of how people should be treated, what constitutes as “justice” and what to do when “injustice” is committed, are all very important subjects that we eventually learn to form our opinions on through life experience and interacting with the world, and will always remain relevant due to how we exist in the world under governments and cultures. It’s dishonest to say we have no belief in stuff like that, and ultimately unhelpful to deny our say in it. Politics are very important, and they matter. But I’m not here to get into a full filibuster about why you should support Black Lives Matter and be informed of the protests going on and what motivates them. The thing is that I trust all you lovely monitors and have the faith that we’re generally on board with at least adjacent beliefs in how the world should work -- the life of innocent people matters, racism and other forms of hatred are bad, killing people is bad, the misuse of authoritative power is unjust, etc. If someone asks me to explain in a multi-paragraph spiel why I believe people should believe these things since they think otherwise… I’ll kindly tell them “no”. Instead, similarly to my COVID-19 writeup, I just want to talk about some tips to help deal with the day-to-day of this ongoing conflict; not necessarily discuss politics in deep detail, but rather the handling of politics in your everyday life, especially during times of controversy. This is a VERY rough time for many people, online and off, and I think it’s as important to keep yourself healthy during this time of extreme tension as much as it is to stay strong regarding the conflict in which we are all in one way or another embroiled in. This writeup might be a little cluttered and clunky since many of these points are greatly interconnected, but just bear with me through this, and I hope the points I make will make sense in the end.

=========================== 1) JUSTICE IS THE BOTTOM LINE =========================== Let me establish something as clear as I possibly can right off the bat: The ultimate goal of rebellion (especially this one based in activism towards the better treatment of black lives) should not be to create stress to psychologically destroy everyone in the vicinity, but to inspire change for the better. The systemic allowing of authorities to misuse their power for hateful purposes should not merely be a seen as an excuse to get angry at the world, but an injustice that must be corrected, and the bottom line of protest is not merely agitation, but actual change. I feel like this should ultimately be pretty obvious for a lot of people, but because change is a very difficult thing in general and because the protests have provoked turbulent response, it’s very easy to lose sight of what we’re actually doing and why, especially for the young adults whose first exposure to complex and nuanced politics is through times like this. Make no mistake, at the end of the day, getting justice for George Floyd and the countless other African-Americans lost to police brutality is the goal. So… why is this controversial? Well, because... =========================== 2) POLITICS ARE COMPLICATED (AND WHY WE MUST BE CAREFUL AND PATIENT WITH IT) =========================== Kind of an obvious statement, but politics are VERY complicated, often to the degree that they can be extremely overwhelming, especially to the young and inexperienced. So I want to start by just making some sense out of the chaos to make what we’re all dealing with more digestible for later. There’s a lot of ways politics can be controversial that I feel should be obvious on a fundamental level of “not agreeing”, but the facet I want to focus on is the fact that in discussion about what’s “morally correct”, morals are not synonymous with the rhetoric and methods with which they’re presented. Often times, people who agree on the same target goal will disagree on the actual means of getting to that goal. We’ve all been in the situation where we got angry at someone for saying something in a really bad way, and frustrated because we also thought “...they still have a good point,” but the delivery made both of us look bad. This is everywhere in politics, and is also just a fact of life and humanity; everyone will have their own opinions on what to do and why to do it, and they may not all be completely the same. That doesn’t mean that people who you don’t 100% agree with are definitively less worthy of being on your side, nor does it mean that people you don’t 100% DISAGREE with are suddenly worth your time. The point is that nuance should be expected… and that’s not unforgivable, contrary to what some people might want you to believe. There’s a frustrating narrative that’s sadly common (or at the very least, disproportionately vocal) within activist movements which social media isn’t helping with, and it’s the classic “you’re either with us or against us” philosophy. Again, this can manifest in many ways, but the prevailing modern take is the oft-unspoken assumption that anyone that doesn’t immediately qualify as an ally must be considered an enemy, ignorant, and/or at the very least worth showing contempt to unless they do something that suddenly makes them qualify as an ally. In other words, assuming the worst of people until proven otherwise. I’ll go into more detail about this further down, but simply put, I do not agree with this approach at all because it inherently roots itself in the presumption that personal philosophies are set in stone, and that it requires a Herculean amount of effort on the other party to change for you. Yes, YOU, the absolute moral victor who not only never needs to change or rethink anything by virtue of being the victor, but also gets to choose what counts as acceptable in the first place. This is not to say that activism is inherently dishonest or bad, merely that again, politics are complicated. This current Black Lives Matter boom and the various responses to it are very complicated, and despite this movement being a thing for a while now, not everyone is an expert on everything that happens and why, especially as it continues to develop. The most egregiously unhelpful part of the “people who are ignorant are enemies” assumption is that it forgets not only that ignorance is the default state everyone born into this world starts as, but also that everyone is perpetually still learning, and no matter what, it’s always possible to change your mind, whether you're 15 or 50. In turn, this implicitly encourages the rejects people who DO want to be accepted as an ally to a cause they ultimately believe in to rush into action just to stop being antagonized for not “getting it.” For your own safety: DO NOT RUSH INTO POLITICS, especially since the current-day responses to some of this conflict can get dangerous. It’s not even a case of getting peer-pressured to getting into a live protest only to do something that gets you shot at with rubber bullets -- you could end up saying something you didn’t realize was insensitive until it was too late, you could mistakenly contribute to a false charity fund or untrustworthy organization merely posing as an activist group, or basically anything that only affirms peoples’ perception of you as ignorant. Please, take your time. As sucky as it is to deal with peer pressure from the toxic people on your side, also remember that you’re not alone. Not just in the sense that there are people who want to understand and become better and more informed like you, but also that there are people who are on your side who WANT you to become better and more informed and will understand if it doesn’t come immediately. Being able to safely say you holistically “understand” is a process that requires a lot of time and thought ruminating about your morals and your place in the world (like, to adulthood at the least, basically), and I can say for sure that many people involved in these activist movements have grown up still understanding that. Also (and this is just a thing on life in general), don’t let mistakes damn you. While everyone should strive to do their best, especially regarding matters as critical and controversial as racial inequity in the justice system, mistakes should not be completely inescapable dead-ends, nor should they be seen as such. Every misstep is a hidden lesson. Did you fall into the trap of misinformation? Give yourself new perspective of what misinformation looks like to avoid it in the future. Did you realize that you’re being strung along in potentially negative action you don’t understand? When you’re skeptical, do your research. Did you end up in a confused place because the causes you followed have come into conflict? Give the time to reassess what you fundamentally believe in and why. In short, Be patient with what the world throws at you. Your friends and allies will love you more for being careful and smart than merely being the first to say something. =========================== 3) REMEMBER TO BE PATIENT WITH YOURSELF TOO =========================== Now I realize that the suggestions I just shared in that last section might read off as being easier said than done, which... yknow, it is. Again, change is difficult not just on a system level, but on an individual, personal level, even when they have to do with the same thing. But now with all that backdrop out of the way, let’s talk directly on mental health. Again. I’ve already discussed my thoughts and tips on keeping your mind healthy in the context of the COVID-19 lockdown (which still is important since the pandemic is still going on, LINK: https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sr7go6 ), and most of the stuff mentioned are still applicable to this new climate that I generally recommend still being practiced on a personal, self-care level: understand that even at the darkest, there will be dawn, keep yourself stimulated with regular activity, and be sure you get plenty of healthy sleep so you don’t spend your waking days tired and unable to lift yourself up. Of course, this is a new situation where the priorities are a lot different, namely that rather than merely keeping your sanity during a very passive time, this new situation is about social interaction, participation, and in general being active in big, drastic ways. That said, I don’t believe the fields are mutually exclusive -- I believe you can act for the greater good while preserving your own health, despite what some might be saying. Going back to that bit of internal gatekeeping of “you’re seen as an enemy until proven otherwise,” another part of what makes this thinking ultimately harmful is that the “line” which “separates” ally and enemy can be incredibly hazy and effectively whatever it wants, with the biggest narrative as of writing being that “silence means you’re complicit in allowing evil, and that if you don’t ever speak up, you’re a bad person.” Now there’s a lot to unpack from this, because this is a case where there is a good point, but it’s buried in vitriol. There ARE valid reasons for why someone would stay quiet, namely that not everyone has the same emotional/psychological bandwidth. Maybe people are having breakdowns because everything in the world angrily and violently collapsed onto them at once. Maybe they had burnout because the exposure dulled them of their usual ability to care. Heck, maybe there’s a way more corporeal issue in that they’re afraid for their own safety because of what they do or don’t say and are afraid of the consequences being literally dangerous, like they might lose their job or are gonna get targeted IRL. But does that constitute a free pass to sit this entire movement out? Well, as nice as it would be, the answer is “no”. Once again, the point of this movement is achieving justice, which I believe is a very worthy cause to take part in should we have the ability to, and I’ll be sharing stuff further down for those who can (and I believe most of you can). But the important thing to know now is that we and our brethren are not completely equal in terms of how smart, vocal, durable, or ultimately able we are, and that's FINE. I want you to know that just because you might not be as big in that regard as your peers, that doesn’t instantly make you “less” of a good person who can do great things, and I don’t think it’s at all wise to see action in a "flawless", black/white way. We all matter. And now is a time to do our best to stand united with our friends to affirm that black lives matter. Now, before I share in tips on how to go about being an active participant, since you’re here reading this huge-ass essay, this is a good time to reflect on where you stand from a mental health perspective, which is just as important and should be regularly checked upon as brushing your teeth. In addition to more visceral emotional reactions like secondhand trauma, other things like burnout and depression don’t just suddenly APPEAR. They creep up on you over time through prolonged stress, and they should be identified before they become a really crippling problem. No matter how passionate you are about advocacy and how much you believe in yourself, recognize that we are all still human, and that there are times that we need to stop, relax, and breathe. (like, literally! Take slow, deep breaths!) Ask yourself: are you physically feeling fatigued? How often? Is your overall morale good? What is your frequency of good to bad days, and is there any correlation you can find that dictates when they occur? Do you get instantly anxious and depressed when receiving certain stimuli like bad news? What about “good” stimuli like being empathetic or compassionate? Give yourself a patient, honest answer: how “well” do you feel? Like from my COVID-19 post, I want to remind that I am not a doctor who can necessarily prescribe things like therapy or give definitive treatment for every individual who reads this based on how they’re doing, and these suggestions are more stuff that I believe will help cope and take care of yourself just from experience. With that being said: • If you are feeling constantly exhausted, finding yourself unable to consciously self-care or work, I cannot recommend a healthy, regular sleep schedule enough. Do your best to be honestly consistent about it, your body and mind will thank you so much for good rest! • If triggering topics are festering in your head, learn how to practice meditation and grounding techniques. Meditating and grounding can be regularly used to help sway your mind away from the harsh topics your mind may wander into and fixate on in any given moment, and can be very helpful in allowing yourself to clear your mind from stress, as well as to refocus on what you’re really experiencing in the present. There are so many ways to approach these forms of treatment to try out, but just some online resources to get started: https://www.theawakenetwork.com/free-online-meditation-resources-for-the-time-of-social-distancing/ --- https://www.healthline.com/health/grounding-techniques • If the constant exposure to these ongoing, intense news and their discussions are becoming too much for you, it is completely within your right to turn off your social media, news, and halt your advocacy in general for a bit. Again, these are important, crucial topics which we ultimately fight for because we believe that things should be better, but if you start to feel legitimately traumatized and unable to properly handle new information to work, you don’t need to continue exposing yourself to it. Give yourself a break from it, you can join back any time once you feel strong again. • Stay connected to the people you trust. I firmly believe that empathy and friendship are more powerful than any kind of indirect threat like peer pressure in helping you stay productive while happy. You were probably already doing this because of the COVID-19 stuff, but now is especially a good time to come together with your friends and loved ones. No matter what, we all need our safety, reassurance, and love, and while we may not always be able to unload all our grievances onto each other (everyone has a right to their own mind they should take care of), there is nothing to be ashamed of in seeking out solidarity. That is a big thing with a movement like this, after all! • If you really believe you need professional help for constant distress, then genuinely good professional help is out there. If you have concern in finding proper mental health treatment (especially for black people), programs out there specifically with it in mind. https://twitter.com/mayarichardsun/status/1265676677549559809 One last point: it’s also important to understand that coping isn’t exactly the same thing as “self care”. We all have an obligation to act in ways that can in one way or another be seen as stressful, but also understand that not all methods to cope with it are equally healthy. What I suggested are very low-maintenance, low financial cost techniques, but there are other techniques like spending cash on clothes or (for some of us), binging on alcohol or other substances. Techniques like that aren’t strictly invalid as coping tools in moderation, but understand that ultimately, self-care is a form of reducing the harm you receive, and it isn’t necessary to cut into your finances or physical health just to not feel bad. Be safe about how you cope! =========================== 4) READY? GET SET. GO! =========================== There are so many ways that you can help with the Black Lives Matter movement that honestly, I’m kinda nervous about going in great detail about all of them since I feel like I might misword stuff that explains themselves very well already, haha. But here is a big, constantly-updating resource that I currently trust and follow: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co This Carrd page by @dehyedration is a very extensive page on “Ways You Can Help”, with links of direct support and additional educational guides for those who wish to be further educated (which should be all of us!). Included are: • Petitions to sign for justice not just for George Floyd, but other victims felled to police brutality (very low-cost and contains details for international). • Text/call contact info towards local govt. representatives who can bring George Floyd and others to justice. • Links to donation funds towards the victims, the protesters, to black-owned businesses, and other charity institutions (includes a segment for international links!). • Guides for live protesters, compiling resources for understanding your legal rights, links for assistance (including access to pro-bono lawyers), and tutorials on how to stay safe and treat injuries should things get hairy. • Additional resources on educating yourself on the topics of Black Lives Matter’s rhetoric and goals, the issues of systemic racism at large, debunking of common misinformation and outright hoaxes, and more! There are MANY way to contribute to the cause right now, and a surprising amount of it you can do in virtually no time. Signing the petitions alone can be all done in 5-10 minutes (give or take, given how many tabs you can open and keep track of at any certain time haha), and even if you can’t donate, there are so many ways to you express your support without needing to have to deal with pointless fights against Twitter trolls. Once again, I firmly believe that contributing to and being aware of a powerful, meaningful cause and keeping your sanity are not mutually exclusive. We can act for the greater good, and we can be healthy about it, so long as we remember to be patient with the world as much as we should be patient with ourselves, and together, we can do amazing things. And one final reminder: just because this is an important subject we should all do our part to get involved in this, that doesn’t mean you must sacrifice everything else in your life right now. As important as the discussion is and as critical a time it is for it to be visible, that doesn’t mean that you should be completely engulfed in it. You can still enjoy what makes you happy, healthy, and motivated enough to take part in this movement. To paraphrase many a wise men: take it, but you can take it easy! I’ll be leaving you with a link to a Twitter thread I found of a bunch of nice news regarding the ongoing protests, which contrary to what a lot of the media might say, is not all looting, fires, and tear gas. The people out there ARE there as a show of solidarity as much as much as support, and it's genuinely beautiful. https://twitter.com/tomakeupwityou/status/1266947871686959106 Stay safe, and stay healthy out there, lovely monitors! (and keep washing your hands!) 🖤🖤🖤

#text #black lives matter

[luckyladylily]

So I’m gonna say some stuff about the police, salt lake city, and some of the bull shit I have heard over the past day or two. I tagged it protest like I said I would, but this is gonna get heavy so I wanted a second warning. This is mostly me just venting, I am not sure it is even worth reading. Just my thoughts about my city and my people.

So some specfic trigger warnings here: protest related stuff, rape mention, abuse mention, police violence, police brutality, homophobia, sex worker discrimination.

Everyone who needs out good? ok.

So for anyone who doesn’t know, I live in the shitty part of Salt Lake City. Utah is primarily known for being conservative and the headquarters of the Mormons, but here in salt lake city things are actually really liberal and diverse. There is a strong bond here between the black community, the Latino community, other POC, the LGBTQ community, and basically anyone in the state who is poor and liberal. We are all the underdogs in a state overrun with conservative conformists that generally hate us, or at least dislike the fact that we exist. It’s a strong unifying factor for us; we are all in this particular boat together, and I am proud to be part of this community. Black, white, Latino, gay, trans, homeless, and sex workers, we are all in this together. These are my people.

Thing is, Utah law enforcement has a history of shittiness in dealing with us. It was an open secret that all the way up until the 90s bored cops would specifically hunt down gay people so they could have some fun “beating up fags”. Sex workers and trans people are afraid of the police, we all avoid them if at all possible. I *know* the black and latino communities don’t like the cops.

I am not saying that I can understand the perspective of black people in an incident like what happened to George Floyd, but when a black dude who went to my therapist was shot in the back by police last year it hit pretty close to home.

The thing to understand is I don’t trust the cops, I don’t like the cops, I don’t respect the cops. I avoid them whenever I can. Earlier this year a close friend of mine was raped, and there was a strong chance it could happen again. Our collective distrust of cops runs so deep that when me and a bunch of friends got together to figure out what to do we didn’t even consider the idea of calling cops. Our friend is a full service worker; unless she asked us to call cops we would never even consider it. Instead protecting each other falls to the community. We’ve got to decide how to deal with stuff like this.

I only say all this so people will get an idea of what things are like down here. It honestly isn’t the worse, but it aint great either. The police are getting better about not causing problems and just leaving us alone unless they are actually needed for something serious (except when it comes to the homeless, they still give them no end of grief.) It’s like, look, we need cops occasionally. We need someone to enforce that restraining order on my friend’s shitty rapist abusive ex, right? Things like that. But could you leave us alone otherwise?

Anyway, the other thing you need to get is that we are a generally peaceful community. SLC does not riot. Ever. I actually looked it up to make sure I had it right and it looks like there hasn’t been a riot here in like a hundred years, until yesterday. Lots and lots of peaceful protest, one riot ever.

But things are getting tense, even here. The death of George Floyd and the national protests were a major part of it, but we also had a very suspect police shooting of a latino kid like a week and a half ago. The protest yesterday was stated by organizers (including the local BLM leaders) to be for both of them.

And yeah, things got a bit rough. Windows got smashed, a 7-11 was looted, they flipped a cop car and burned it. They also burned the car of a “counter protester” that tried to shoot a fucking hunting bow into the crowd.

So look, it was a riot. Small, but hey it was our first time. But we are not violent people. No major injuries until later that night when cops started shooting rubber bullets into the crowd. Not even the asshole that tried to shoot a bow into the crowd got seriously hurt, he walked away from that because the protesters, despite their anger, knew when they shouldn’t cross a line. If only our police showed half the restraint.

So let me tell you I was fucking livid when the govenor and media started saying “Salt Lake protests turn violent.” A cop car was set on fire, no one was inside. That isn’t violence. That’s destruction of property. They are making us out to be bad people in the streets hurting people for no reason. But you know what real violence is? When a cop yells at a nurse in a hospital for not breaking the law and immediately handing over confidential patient information, and then he grabs her and drags her outside and throws her in the cop car for disrespecting his authority or some shit. That was last year too.

I don’t know if you have seen the video going around of an elderly man with a cane, struggling to follow the orders of cops but he can’t walk fast enough for them, being shoved over by riot cops. That was here, in this city. Lots of other stuff happened yesterday but that one stands out for being a blatantly pointless show of violence.

So our extended family, particularly on my wife’s side. They’ve been texting us in a panic since yesterday afternoon talking about the “senseless violence and destruction” going on down here. My mother in law had the gall to say “thank goodness for the brave police or it would be chaos!”

That really bothered me because no, that is exactly wrong. We are not afraid of the protesters or even the rioters. We are afraid of the police. If I wasn’t taking care of my disabled daughter I would be out there with them protesting.

I don’t know if there is a real point to all this venting besides that there is this line. On one side are the cops and the people who support the cops and how they maintain the oppressive and violent status quo. On the other side are people like me. My people. And it really bothers me how many people don’t even know this line exists. The concept that maybe the rioters have a point, that maybe even the most peaceful community pushed too far is going to turn to unrest, doesn’t even enter into their heads. It’s like some fucking bizzaro world where instead of all cops are bastards it is all protesters are bastards. It really bothers me that when people like my mother in law try to sort the world into us and them she somehow puts us on her side.

But it isn’t like that. If there is an us and a them then we are part of the them, and I am proud of being one of them.

#protest #violence #rape #abuse #police brutality #you can reblog this if you like #it isn't private #but honestly I would reblog from black people right now #do that first #it's so much worse for them

[bryanharryrombough]

In April 2015, Baltimore was burning. A twenty-five-year-old Black man named Freddie Gray had died after a week-long coma following his violent arrest and “rough ride” in the back of a Baltimore Police Department van. Anger at police brutality had spilled out onto the streets.

I flew to Baltimore to cover the city’s history with police brutality for a documentary I was making for CBC Radio. I arrived the day after Baltimore state attorney Marilyn Mosby announced charges against the six police officers involved in Gray’s arrest. (They were never convicted.) The charges were considered so rare a sign of accountability that they prompted celebration in Gray’s West Baltimore neighbourhood, the first place I headed with my recorder and notebook. It was a partly cloudy day, and a block party was alive with music blaring from massive speakers. DJs, parents, and youth held signs in honour of Gray. This past May and June, I watched more sombre versions of this scene play out with crushing familiarity as, in all fifty US states, crowds of protesters took to the streets with signs commemorating more victims of police brutality.

I stayed till night fell, keeping my eye on my watch. The city was under a 10 p.m. curfew, and helicopters were beginning to circle overhead. Just as I was heading into the subway station to go to my hotel, a young man stopped to ask me what news organization I was with. He seemed keen to talk. I turned my mic on, asked him what his name was—Lonnie Moore, I jotted down in my notebook—and asked him about his own experiences of police encounters in Baltimore.

As we talked, another man walked up and, without missing a beat, joined the conversation. I asked him his name and spelled it out loud to him as I put it in my notebook: J-A-R-E—“No,” he corrected me, “J-A-R-R-O-D Jones.” These two men were strangers to each other, but as they shared stories, they were soon completing each other’s sentences, saying words in unison, and mirroring each other’s accounts, including incidents of being called the n-word by various officers. Jarrod Jones recounted unwarranted personal searches. “The police will grab you, make you pull your pants down in front of people,” he said. “You know? They tell you, ‘Lift your sack up.’” He also said something prescient, though I wouldn’t know it until I returned home: “I think that people think we’re making this stuff up.”

I returned to Toronto after a whirlwind thirty-six hours in Baltimore, eager to showcase the stories I’d heard, including Moore and Jones’s. But the executive producer at the time didn’t want to air my interview with them. She asked whether I had called the police to respond to Moore and Jones’ accounts of mistreatment. I had tried, but the department—and its union—hadn’t returned my calls or emails. Then came the next question: How can you verify that these men gave you their real names?

That’s when I learned that, in Canadian media, there’s an added burden of proof, for both journalists and sources, that accompanies stories about racism.

I’d worked in journalism for six years by then, and the skepticism toward Moore and Jones’s identities—let alone their experiences—was the first time I’d seen my interviewees’ claims met with such a high degree of mistrust. (The executive producer at the time says she regularly asks reporters for verification of sources’ names and their accounts. This is the first time I remember her asking it of me.) I trusted the men’s names and their experiences because, all around us—including my very presence in Baltimore, specifically in Freddie Gray’s neighbourhood—were signs that these experiences were not uncommon. The raw forcefulness with which they spoke was an indication that they were telling me the truth. But there was one more clear sign that I offered to my executive producer about how I knew they had given me their real names: Jarrod Jones had corrected my initial spelling of his first name, which, to me, was proof that he hadn’t lied about it. (The executive producer did not recall this part of the conversation.) She seemed unswayed and instead began to remind me about the importance of accuracy and verification as core principles of journalism.

I came out of my executive producer’s office with a look on my face that caught the attention of an older white male colleague, who asked me if I was okay. I told him what had happened. He spoke to the executive producer on my behalf. She relented.

I’ve since faced several such roadblocks in my journalism career. Combined with the experiences of other racialized journalists, they represent a phenomenon I’ve come to think of as a deep crisis of credibility in Canadian media. There is the lack of trust toward the Black, Indigenous, and other racialized people whose stories we are supposed to cover as a reflection of the world we live in. Then there is the mistrust of the Black, Indigenous, and other racialized journalists who try to report on those stories. Our professionalism is questioned when we report on the communities we’re from, and the spectre of advocacy follows us in a way that it does not follow many of our white colleagues.

There is a reckoning underway that has spared almost no industry, sparked by an alarming succession of killings of Black people in the US: Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and many more. The violence of those deaths, and the inescapable racism that underpinned them all, incited a tidal wave of anger and fatigue from Black people who had long been calling out the discrimination that they face in their daily lives. From academia to theatre, the beauty industry to major tech corporations, Black and other racialized employees are publicly coming forward and detailing how their organizations have perpetuated racism against them.

Newsrooms in the US and Canada, for their part, have been forced to acknowledge that they have to do better: in who they hire, who they retain, who gets promoted, what they cover, and how they cover it. This moment has resurrected a question that’s haunted me since I returned from Baltimore: How can the media be trusted to report on what Black and other racialized people are facing when it doesn’t even believe them?

In many American cities, the protests calling for justice following the killings of Black people like Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor have been met with violent responses from police, who have tear-gassed, chased, shoved, beaten, and arrested protesters and journalists. In May, Omar Jimenez, a Black CNN reporter, was handcuffed and led away by police while the cameras rolled.

Watching the recent police violence against protesters unfold reminded me of how my interview with the two men in Baltimore had ended. It was 10 p.m., meaning the city-wide curfew was now in effect, and we were standing just outside a subway station in the Penn North neighbourhood. Lonnie Moore, the young Black man who had first approached me, had just left. I was putting my recorder away when police came rushing into the block. They told Jarrod Jones and me we had to leave. We tried to enter a nearby subway station, but a police officer blocked the entrance. We tried to turn down a side street, but another officer told us we couldn’t go that way either. We tried every escape we could think of, but we were boxed in.

Suddenly, one officer began charging at us, his baton out, swinging, shoving Jones and cursing at him. We ran away from him as fast as we could, my bag with my recording equipment bouncing clumsily behind me.

None of this made it to air. I had made the rookie mistake of turning off my radio recorder as soon as the interview ended. But I probably would not have worked it into the documentary anyway; as a journalist, you want to avoid becoming part of the story. One of the core elements of journalism is for reporters to maintain a distance from those they cover, which is meant to provide a sense of objectivity. For many white journalists, that distance is built into their very life experiences. But, for many other journalists, there is no distance between what happened to George Floyd and what could have happened to them. Distance is a luxury.

When I got back to Toronto, I told my deskmates about my time in Baltimore in hushed tones. I felt at the time that to speak of it more openly would somehow implicate me, that my story could be seen through the lens of advocacy instead of hard and fast reporting. I also knew you never want to end up on the wrong side of police, especially as a racialized person, and leave it up to others to decide how your actions may have justified violence against you.

In journalism, as in predominantly white societies at large, questioning police narratives is complicated. “The police play a very powerful role in defining what the nature and extent of crime is in our society,” says Julius Haag, a criminologist and  sociology professor at the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus. “Police also recognize that they have a powerful role in shaping public perceptions, and they use that ability within the media to help . . . legitimize their purpose and their responses.”

A. Dwight Pettit, a Baltimore-based lawyer I interviewed for my documentary in 2015, told me something about why police accounts are rarely questioned by the media that stayed with me. Juries seem to have trouble confronting the violence in police-brutality cases, he said, because so often, people have grown up seeing police doing right by them and have trusted police with their safety. This is especially true for white people, who are less likely to be treated unfairly by police. Putting police on trial would be asking people to challenge their lifelong beliefs.

Anthony N. Morgan, a racial-justice lawyer in Toronto, says this same dynamic plays out in Canada, in both “obvious and indirect ways.” Racialized people can tell you about water cooler conversations they’ve had with white colleagues about racism they’ve experienced and witnessed, which “often end up in the ‘Did that really happen? What were they doing? Maybe we need to see more of the video?’ territory,” he says. “These kinds of frankly absurd ways of justifying and excusing murder or harm done to Black and Indigenous people play out in society more generally, and I think they play out in journalism too.”

On May 27, a twenty-nine-year-old Black Indigenous woman named Regis Korchinski-Paquet fell from a twenty-fourth floor balcony in Toronto while police were in her apartment, responding to the family’s call for help with her mental health crisis. Police were the only ones there during the fall, and questions about the moments before her death are still unanswered. The tragedy has also boosted calls from racialized journalists to challenge the media’s overreliance on police narratives.

It wasn’t until the next day that media reports included any of her family members’ voices or began questioning the role of police in Korchinski-Paquet’s death. Not because the family didn’t want to talk to the media: the family’s social media posts are what had raised initial awareness about Korchinski-Paquet’s death. One journalist described arriving at the scene to talk to family members and seeing other reporters there. (This gap in the reporting may have stemmed from some family members’ initial social media posts, which effectively accused the police of killing Korchinski-Paquet and would have been impossible to independently verify at the time. The family’s lawyer later clarified their initial statements, saying they believed police actions may have played a role in Korchinski-Paquet’s death.)

Instead, the very first news stories about Korchinski-Paquet’s death were based solely on a statement from the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), the civilian-oversight agency in Ontario that is automatically called to investigate circumstances involving police that have resulted in death, serious injury, or allegations of sexual assault. Some journalists asked their newsrooms and organizations to explain why early coverage excluded the family’s narrative. I know one journalist whose editor questioned her for reporting what the family had told her in the early hours.

Korchinski-Paquet’s death is just the latest reminder of why some journalists have long been arguing that police versions of events—whether their own actions or the actions of those they police—should be subject to the same levels of scrutiny other powerful bodies garner, and that their accounts cannot be relied on as the only source. “The police are not, in and of themselves, objective observers of things,” said Wesley Lowery—who was part of a Washington Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of fatal shootings by police officers—in a Longform podcast interview in June. “They are political and government entities who are the literal characters in the story.”

Nor do police watchdogs offer a sufficient counternarrative. The SIU has long been plagued with concerns about its power and credibility. Former Ontario ombudsman André Marin released a 2008 report saying that Ontario’s system of police oversight has failed to live up to its promise due to a “complacent” culture and a lack of rigour in ensuring police follow the rules. More recently, the limited powers of the SIU have been made clear in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of D’Andre Campbell, a twenty-six-year-old Black man with schizophrenia, who was shot by a Peel police officer in April after he called the police for help. So far, that officer has refused to be interviewed by the SIU and has not submitted any notes to the police watchdog—nor can the officer be legally compelled to do so.

In 2018, I would see these obstacles play out in my own reporting. I had helped produce a series of live town halls on racism across the country. The Vancouver edition focused on racism in health care, with one conversation centring on the experience of two Indigenous nurses. Diane Lingren, provincial chair for the Indigenous leadership caucus of the BC Nurses’ Union, recounted how she often saw non-Indigenous people who appeared to be intoxicated be “told to settle down, and then they get a cab ride” to an overnight shelter. With Indigenous people, she said, “I see the RCMP called. . . . I see them handcuff their ankles to their wrists so they can’t walk. . . . I see those people get taken away in the police cars.”

The RCMP denied that account; their response included a statement about their practice of a “bias free policing policy.” In response to that statement, the executive producer on the series wanted to cut the Indigenous nurses’ anecdotes from the show entirely. (The producer could not be reached for confirmation.) My co-producers and I fought to retain them, to present them along with the RCMP’s statement. This shouldn’t have been a battle: our very role as journalists is to present all the facts, fairly, with context. But, in many newsrooms, police narratives carry enough weight to effectively negate, silence, and disappear the experiences of racialized people.

That it’s racialized journalists who have had to challenge police narratives and counter this tradition is an immense burden—and it’s risky. “The views and inclinations of whiteness are accepted as the objective neutral,” Wesley Lowery wrote in a June op-ed in the New York Times. “When Black and Brown reporters and editors challenge those conventions, it’s not uncommon for them to be pushed out, reprimanded, or robbed of new opportunities.”

That last point rings entirely too true for me.

In July 2017, I was guest producing on a weekly show for a brief summer stint. One story I produced was an interview with Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, an Emmy-nominated journalist who was in Jerusalem covering protests that had sprung up at the al-Aqsa mosque. Worshippers were praying outside the mosque, instead of inside, in an act of civil disobedience against the installation of metal detectors following the killing of two Israeli police officers by Israeli Arab attackers. In the interview, he explained the source of the tension, what the front lines of the protests looked like, and also touched on press freedom—Shihab-Eldin himself had been stopped, questioned, and jostled by Israeli security forces while he was reporting. From the moment I pitched having him on the show, the acting senior producer showed keen interest in the story. This enthusiasm made what happened next all the more confounding.

We recorded the interview on a Friday. Shortly afterward, that same senior producer told me the segment was being pulled from the show and that she would not have the time to explain why. She had consulted a director, and together they had ultimately decided to kill it. The story never went to air.

I spent a week trying to get an explanation. It wasn’t lost on me that the interview would have included criticism of Israeli security forces and that I was coming up on the intersection of two issues here: the media’s aversion to criticism of law enforcement coupled with its deeply ingrained reluctance to wade into the conversation about Israel and Palestine, especially if this means critiquing the Israeli government’s policies or actions. Bias or one-sidedness shouldn’t have been a concern: I had planned on incorporating the Israeli Defense Force press office’s response into the story. The story couldn’t, and wouldn’t, have run without it.

In the end, the senior director, who had been the one to make the final call to not run the interview, wrote an apologetic email to Shihab-Eldin and me, which read, in part: “Our hope was that further work on our end would allow us to give our audiences more context so that they would not leave your interview with unanswered questions. . . . We ran into unexpected difficulties in doing so.”

I had heard nothing about the story needing more context, or about questions that the senior director and senior producer felt were unanswered, before the decision was made. Nor did I have a clear understanding of what these “unexpected difficulties” were. (The senior producer and director say they felt the interview was too opinionated.) For his part, Shihab-Eldin responded to the senior director with: “Unfortunately I’m all too familiar with ‘unexpected difficulties’.”

It was the first and only time in my ten years of journalism experience that a story was pulled—let alone without an open editorial discussion or transparency. And I did not realize just how much this experience would mark me and my future in this profession.

To be a journalist in any media organization or newsroom is to navigate the crush of the daily news cycle; the relentlessness of deadlines; and the pressure, care, and complexity it takes to craft a story well. To be a racialized journalist is to navigate that role while also walking a tightrope: being a professional journalist and also bringing forward the stories that are perhaps not on the radar of the average newsroom but are close to home for many of us. And it takes a toll.

The stories I’ve recounted are the ones that stood out the most over my ten years in journalism. There are countless other, smaller fights that took place. When asked to comment for this article, Chuck Thompson, head of public affairs at the CBC, wrote in an email: “We are actively reviewing our journalistic standards to ensure we are interpreting policies and practices through a more inclusive lens. . . . It is just one of several recommitments we have made including hiring more Black, Indigenous and people of colour within our teams but also into leadership positions. We can point to a half dozen recent hires and promotions that show that pledge to do better, is both authentic and genuine.” His email also referenced existing initiatives, such as the CBC’s Developing Emerging Leaders Program, “which identifies and trains people of colour, as well as Black and Indigenous people, who are indeed taking their rightful place at our leadership tables.” (I am a graduate of the inaugural cohort of that program.)

Diversity is a feel-good term that is often held up as a goal and priority by industries from media to law to academia and beyond. It’s supposed to be the antidote to the experiences I’ve described and a signal that employers value and seek a range of perspectives, backgrounds, world views, and experiences that run the spectrum of age, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, race, and ability. If that feels like a massive umbrella of goals and classifications, that’s because it is.

Just take a look at any Canadian newsroom, even in Toronto, a city that is over 50 percent nonwhite. As a starting point, our newsrooms do not reflect the world outside of them—which does not bode well for accurately representing the breadth of stories playing out every day. As a result, from the second so many racialized journalists walk into news organizations, we are still often the Only Ones in the Room. And, where there are racialized journalists at all, there are even fewer Black and Indigenous journalists. As you go higher up the ladder of these organizations, it’s not long before Black, Indigenous, and racialized journalists aren’t in the room at all. Meanwhile, news organizations regularly see our mere presence in their newsrooms as successful examples of so-called diversity even if our roles are overwhelmingly junior and precarious.

This setup often ends up placing the responsibility on the Only Ones in the Room to guarantee a spectrum of experiences and stories in news coverage and to point out where coverage misses the mark, including when there is a story involving the actions of police. The responsibility is heavy.

It’s a dynamic that Asmaa Malik, a professor at Ryerson University’s school of journalism, sees playing out regularly. Her research focuses on race and Canadian media as well as on the role of diversity in news innovation. “There’s an idea in many Canadian newsrooms that, if you have one person who checks the box, then you’re covered,” she says. “So the burden that puts on individual journalists is huge.”

Everyone who’s been the Only One in the Room knows what it’s like. The silence that falls when a story about racism is pitched. The awkward seat shifting. The averted stares. We’ve felt it, and internalized it, and expected it. We know that there is often an unspoken higher burden of proof for these stories than for others, a problem that has long been exacerbated by the fact that race-based data is rarely collected in policing, health care, and other fields. Yet it is on us to fill this void and “prove” the existence of racism. As a result, we overprepare those pitches. We anticipate your questions. We get used to having the lives of our friends and families and the people who look like them discounted, played devil’s advocate to, intellectualized from a sanitized distance.

A long-time producer at a major news organization, a Black woman whose name I agreed not to use because of fear for her job security, bristled at the suggestion that to cover stories that hit close to home, including anti-Black racism, police brutality, and the Black Lives Matter movement, is to somehow engage in advocacy. “There seems to be the assumption that we cannot coexist with the journalistic standards of being fair and balanced and impartial. Really, what we are fighting for, what we’ve always been fighting for, is just the truth.”

In the meantime, when race and racism feature heavily in headlines, we are relied on to become sensitivity readers for our organizations, suddenly asked if things can be run past us or whether the show is hitting the right marks or whether we can connect other journalists to racialized communities and sources that are harder to reach. “This is in addition to the regular reporting that we do day-to-day. There’s just a level of work that goes unseen and unacknowledged,” the producer told me. “And the future of our institutions depends on us doing the work.”

Under the banner of diversity, we are told to bring ourselves and our perspectives. But, if we bring too much of them, we are marked and kept back.

I once applied to a senior editorial position after taking a leadership course only to be told I needed more training. I ended up taking on this role for nine months anyway, to fill in for a maternity leave. After that stint, in a meeting with a manager in which I expressed wanting to take on more leadership opportunities, I was told that I had to bide my time. (The manager remembers discussing other job opportunities but does not recall this part of the conversation.) At this point, I’d been at the organization for ten years, eight of which were at the specific show whose senior leadership I was applying for. The writing was on the wall for me. I left the organization less than two months later.

For many of us, that kind of coded language—about needing more training, about biding our time—is proof that we will never be deemed qualified enough to lead the news that is often not made with us in mind, as audiences or as creators. In June, Kim Wheeler, an Anishinabe/Mohawk reporter, took to Twitter to write that she had left her job at the CBC after a network manager said she would never be a senior producer at the show she worked on. A Black producer described regularly being asked to fill more senior roles, but only on a temporary basis.

It was only after I left my job that someone who had been on the hiring committee for the senior editorial role told me the reason I had been turned down. The director who had decided not to run the 2017 interview from Jerusalem had also been part of the hiring committee and had expressed concerns that I was biased and therefore should not be promoted, an opinion shared among some of the other committee members. And that was that.

There’s no way of knowing this with absolute certainty, but I can’t help but imagine how things might have been different if the hiring committee, which had been made up of predominantly white women, had had another set of eyes, experiences, and world views. The presence of someone else in that room might have challenged the notion that I was biased.

“Diversity” is a word that’s held up as a solution to the obvious gaps and inequities in media and other industries—in its most generous and naive interpretation, it’s supposed to encapsulate my experience, and yours, and hers, and his, and all of ours. Instead, the language of diversity and inclusion, to us, ends up feeling like we are being invited to a table as guests, but there are conditions to keeping our seat. Shake that table just a little bit, and you’ll soon find that your invitation has been rescinded.

Many racialized journalists have had enough with the diversity talk. It’s long been clear that Black, Indigenous, and other racialized people must be at the forefront of the change in leadership that newsrooms so desperately need—at the decision-making tables, with enough power and security to sit in their seats comfortably, shake the tables, or flip them entirely.

On an unusually hot, still day in June, while the world was in the early stages of the reckoning that remains underway, I sat with four women, all Black journalist friends of mine, on my back patio. Many of us had been fielding “Are you okay? Thinking of you” texts, phone calls, and emails for the past week and consulting one another on how to respond, if at all. We sat outside and talked as the sun set. It had been two weeks at least since we had been furiously keeping in touch in a frantic group chat, trying to keep abreast of all the world’s events and the shifting media landscape, but this was the first time I’d seen them in months, given the pandemic. We talked, ate, raged, commiserated, ranted, shared, had tea, until almost midnight. As it got dark, I brought out candles and looked at my friends’ faces in the glow. Everyone was so tired, so spent, so on edge, but so happy to see one another. The furrowed brows gave way to laughter, calm, relief.

We dreamt of what it would be like if we all got to work together. We dreamt, naively, about creating our own news organizations. We dreamt, perhaps more realistically, about getting to do the work we wanted to do in newsrooms that are truly reflective of the worlds we live in.

It reminded me of what the Black producer whose name I had agreed not to use had told me: “It feels like such a weight to just make sure that the coverage we are doing on race and racism is good. We don’t have the luxury of pitching things that are just meant to bring us joy.”

It’s true. There is so much more to us, if only there were space. There’s so much more we want to talk about, so much more we want to do. But the burden is now on the Canadian media industry and its leaders to enable that work instead of questioning it. To get out of the way so it can happen.

Many of us have long been lectured to about journalistic standards and practices: verification, balance, objectivity, and accuracy. I find it ironic. In an industry that loves to talk to its racialized employees about accuracy when we pitch and cover experiences that mirror ours, what’s become clear is that media organizations themselves have failed these tests of accuracy. Their very existence and makeup has long been an inaccurate reflection of the world we live in. The accuracy problem was never ours to fix. It’s time newsrooms admitted that they regret the error and put real work into correcting a historical mistake.

#anti-blackness #canadian media #diversity #journalism #police #racism

[thisisdavidwolf]

names and faces

Want to know a secret?

I'm really, really bad at remembering names.

I know, I know. You're probably laughing right now.

I get it. A Theology major/future pastor or individual involved in ministry who can't remember names? Yeah, that might be an issue. ;) 

It's funny though. I can remember faces. I'll probably recognize you in a crowd. I can most likely tell you exactly how we met, what was said during that meeting, when we last saw each other, what you were wearing, and a literal ton of other small details regarding our acquaintance.

But I probably won't be able to remember your name. I’m sorry. I’m working on it. 

........................................................................................

I don't remember his name either. I've tried extremely hard to remember it as I have thought about him today, but it just isn't there. Nevertheless, I remember him and I suppose that is what is important. Let me tell you about this young friend.

He's kinda short--probably right around five feet. He’s probably only nine or ten, so I guess that's a pretty normal height. His head came up just about to my left shoulder. I know because he stood right beside me most of the day.

He's a student at an elementary school in a rougher part of town. As the van carrying myself and several other college students arrived early that morning, I remember feeling slightly shocked as I gazed upon an older building surrounded by a tall, chainlink fence complete with barbwire. My eyes, which had grown accustomed to the kind and warm buildings of my university's campus, involuntarily blinked several times as they adjusted to the environment I was now in. It felt rough. Cold.

...both metaphorically and in actuality. It was actually cold. The first thing I noticed when I met my young friend was that he was dressed extremely warm. That kid had to have had on at least three layers, not including his big winter coat, and he was wearing insulated snow pants. I laughed a little bit inside. When he told me later (while shaking his head and trying fain disgust) that his mother had forced him to dress like he did, "So he wouldn't freeze to death," my internal laughter might have slipped out for a split second. I wondered if we had the same mother.

While I don't exactly remember my first words to him, they were most likely some variation of a smile and a "Wassuuup, dude!". That's kinda my standard line when I met someone new. He introduced himself, and we joked for a little bit while the older adults figured out what needed to be done around the school. When I finally selected a task, my friend had made his selection too.

"I'm with you," he said.

We talked as we picked up trash together. Eventually, our conversation moved beyond scattered small talk and became a little more personal. I was surprised that he led the majority of the conversation.

"What grade are you in?" he asked.

"I'm in college, my guy," I responded.

"College?"

"Yeah. I'm studying Theology."

"Theology?"

"Yeah, like the Bible and religion and stuff."

"Oh, so you want to be a pastor or something?"

I smiled slightly at his response.

"Yeah, something like that," I responded.

We picked up more trash for several minutes.

"You like basketball?" he asked me.

I wish I was quick enough to connect the dots between our conversations, but I wasn't. Kids can be so quick. Sometimes I wonder if the average child is actually smarter than the average adult--perhaps it’s just a matter of learning how to express that intelligence. I told him I wasn't really that big into sports, and he looked a little shocked and disappointed. I asked him about his favorite team or player, and he went on and on as he told me about them. I could tell this was something he really loved to talk about. Our conversation eventually shifted to football, and he later showed me that he had his favorite team's logo on one of the three million shirts he was wearing.

"What do you want to do when you get older?" I asked.

"I want to join the NBA!" he said.

The way his eyes lit up as he said those words made me smile. He told me that he was apart of a small team that played other teams in his neighborhood, but that they weren't very good. He admitted that with more of a tone of disgust than of shame. All of the older kids wanted to get into the NBA too, he told me. I could tell part of him was living on this dream of making it big in basketball.

As we walked outside the gate and picked up trash along the fence, my new friend shook his head in a very grown-up manner and said, "These streets are wild, man. These streets and neighborhoods are crazy. I've heard gunshots before. We had someone get killed a while back."

I paused. I’d heard gunshots before. In fact, between three or four of our neighbors, I've probably heard 20x the amount he had. I grew up in the country. Our neighbor to the west seems to have a particular affinity for blowing through copious amounts of money in the form of ammo for his semi-automatic toys. But I've never heard anyone shoot at someone else before, or heard shots echo in a small neighborhood.

Behind the mannerism that seemed to tell me that he was repeating something he had heard an adult say, I saw a kid who was probably a little scared. I think he realized that I didn't know exactly what his life was like, and it seemed he was trying to gain my respect in a way. I told him that sounded hard, rough, and a little scary. He nodded. We were both silent for a while.

"Why are you guys here? Do they pay you or something?" he asked.

"Not exactly," I laughed. "Our school lets the students take the day off in order to do some volunteering. There are a lot of community service projects happening today. I decided to come here."

"So this isn't required?"

"Not really."

"I bet lots of kids are sitting in their rooms watching Tv or playing video games. That's what I would be doing," he told me.

I just smiled.

"Do you have a TV in your room?" he asked.

...and so our conversation continued.

As I think about it now, I was a bundle of contradicting feelings as I rode away from the school that day. On the one hand, our group had been a great help to the busy teachers and staff. We had cleaned, painted, raked leaves, organized sheds, and picked up trash. But on the other hand, it seemed so cruel for us to swoop in, make friends with some of these kids, and then just leave. It seemed so wrong to make a friend just for one day.

And yet, I felt a growing conviction that my experience with my young friend was ministry. Just walking with someone--even for a short time. Being present. Sharing in his or her joys and fears. 

I didn't understand or think about it then, but I realize now that this is an incredibly high calling. Lord, help me.

........................................................................................

I told you at the start that I'm not great at remembering names. I guess that's not entirely true. Tonight, I can't shake the names of several individuals.

Ahmaud Arbery

Breonna Taylor

George Floyd.

You've probably heard these names too.

Racism and police brutality are uncomfortable topics. It's tempting to turn away, dismiss the problem, play the blame game, wait for "all the facts," shift the focus to condemning the riots and looting... I know because I realize I've done it. In an attempt to not let myself feel the hurt, I've grown calloused and indifferent to the deaths I read about on the news. Any one of the above responses is easier on my heart.

But you know what's breaking my heart? I can't stop imagining my young, trash collecting friend. In some sick twist of fate, what if he was underneath the knee of that police officer? What if he was murdered while jogging? What if he was just sleeping peacefully, only to be shot?

Those questions hurt, friend. And I think that's a good thing.

I'm leaning in. I'm listening, reading, learning, and desperately seeking to approach this topic with as much empathy and love as Jesus would. It's uncomfortable--but I am carrying a growing conviction that this discomfort is a good thing.

I challenge you to join me in the discomfort.

........................................................................................

As I have thought on this issue over the past several days, I've begun to feel and absorb lots of different emotions--emotions of my own and of others. As I scrolled through social media, watched videos, and read articles to educate myself, I found that I was beginning to feel overwhelmed. So much of my personality includes helping and giving. How can I help? How can I give? A sea of voices offered many steps to take.

Educate yourself.

Sign these petitions.

Send an email.

Vote, especially in your local elections.

Donate to these organizations.

Watch this video.

Participate in peaceful protests.

Engage in difficult conversations with family and friends.

Don't mistake me, all of these are valid and great action items. I'm doing several of them. Yesterday, however, I found myself concentrating so much on these things that I lost my focus. In my quest for answers, my balance between horizontal and vertical focus began to tilt way too far in the wrong direction. Not only did I begin to lose focus, but I also began to lose peace.

Perhaps this is unnecessary, but let me clarify what I mean by "losing my peace." I don't mean that I was simply uncomfortable--I've already stated that I'm trying to intentionally lean into that feeling. Rather, I felt the world grow dark as I began to realize that I couldn't fix it all. 

My voice is so small. We're fighting ideas and trying to fix messed up hearts and minds (mine included). What good is just signing a petition, writing an email, or making a phone call? Injustice will still exist. Pain will still be a real reality. Death will still occur. I can never give enough or help enough to fix the problem. 

God, I can't fix it all!

You're right, David. You can't fix it all. But don't you know Someone who can? Let Me work through you. 

The thought wasn't as much of a direct statement as it was a slow realization--and it instantly broke away the darkness. Oh friend, how confusing and dark it is when one forgets the vertical relationship that fuels the horizontal action.

As I sought for new answers this morning, I came upon Psalm 101. The first three verses spoke to my heart.

I will sing of mercy and justice

To You, O LORD, I will sing praises.

I will behave wisely in a perfect way

Oh, when will you come to me?

I will walk within my house

with a perfect heart.

I will set nothing wicked before my eyes

I hate the work of those who fall away

It shall not cling to me.

This Psalm is a pledge and a promise. But do you know what I find ironic? I can't possibly hope to fulfill any of these promises on my own. Behave wisely in a perfect way? Walk with a perfect heart? Set nothing wicked before my eyes? I cannot achieve this level of perfection on my own, and I think that's the point.

I need a Savior. I need Jesus.

My world needs Jesus. You and I have been given the gift of being able to represent Him to a hurting world. With His help, will I represent Him well?

I need to remember that Jesus still reigns in heaven and that this world is not my home, but I also have a work to do while I'm here. The Christianity that I claim to hold dear calls me to "do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with my God." While I point others to my Savior through action and word, I prayerfully beg the Holy Spirit to open my eyes, strip me of my selfishness and pride, and impart divine wisdom so that I can love and stand with my fellow man as Jesus would.

That's what my God asks of me. The vertical will give me purpose and strength as I wrestle with the horizontal. 

Is He asking the same things of you, friend?

........................................................................................

2020 is turning out to be quite the year of growth. Lord, have mercy.

[lovingunderratedcharacters]

How They React to You Joining the Company

Anon: Hi, I love your blog. Can I ask for headcanons of reactions for you (a female) joining the companies as a sniper with an impressively high kill count. Specifically for generation kill, with Nate Fick and Doc Bryan and Ray Person, and BoB, with Gene,Toye, Guarnere, and others if you want?

Richard Winters: He knew about you before you joined. You were kind of a legend among officers. He kept quiet about your accomplishments, though, because he wanted the men to like and respect you because of who you are rather than what you’ve done. He has great respect for you and does not look at you differently because you’re female.

Lewis Nixon: He knows about your accomplishments and doesn’t give a shit. All he cares about is that you’re willing to take a joke and you don’t bother him about meaningless problems. He enjoys hanging out with you from time to time, but in public he tries to keep his distance so that no one starts associating the two of you together (even though secretly he loves the nights when you two talk about the crap you’ve been through).

Ronald Speirs: He thinks you’re a badass, and treats you as such. Granted, he was VERY surprised when you turned up and you were a woman. When he heard stories about an incredible sniper going through Germany taking out enemies, he figured that you were a guy. That being said, his opinion of you didn’t change in the slightest when he met you.

Carwood Lipton: He was hesitant about you joining, but it’s not for the reason you would think. He would never consider you less skilled or qualified because you are a woman. Rather, he was hesitant because he wasn’t sure how to go about keeping you safe. Mama Lip is protective as hell, but he was worried that he would come off as overly protective or even flirting with you by protecting you. Later on, he warmed up to you being around.

Darrell “Shifty” Powers: Nervous as hell. Like, every time the two of you speak, he ends up a blushing and stuttering mess. He will always call you ma’am or miss, no matter how often you tell him that he doesn’t need to call you that. When he gets more comfortable around you, the two of you have shooting contests all the time. Neither of you win because you’re both too polite to actually try to beat the other.

Floyd Talbert: He flirts with you constantly. Obviously, there’s respect, but not at first. You’re just some girl who’s come to screw everything up so he might as well have some fun. And then he see’s you shooting, and he shuts the hell up. Now, he still flirts with you ALL THE TIME, but he’s pretty respectful and will hurt any guy that tries to harass you. He becomes extra protective, especially right after he finds out what you can do.

Bill Guarnere: He walks straight up to you and introduces you to the rest of the guys. Growing up in a big Italian family has made him a natural at taking others under his wing, and that’s exactly what he does with you. You end up becoming like a little sister to him, and everyone knows it. He doesn’t really like the fact that you’re a sniper, simply because he sees you as someone who’s innocent and it hurts him to see you loose your innocence to war.

Joe Toye: It took him a solid two weeks to say a word to you, despite Bill’s push for everyone to get to know you. He has no specific opinion of you. He just doesn’t have a reason to talk to you. Also, he would never admit this but he stays away from you so that he doesn’t have to suffer if you end up dying. He knows what he can handle, and seeing a woman die in front of him to save the lives of others is not something he wants to deal with.

Denver “Bull” Randleman: His Southern hospitality gets the best of him. He takes care of you, bringing you food, shielding you from harassment, sitting next to you when you start to have a nightmare. He’s a lot like Bill in that he doesn’t like that you’re a sniper, but he’s less vocal about his opinion than Bill. He has a great amount of respect for you and he couldn’t imagine what he would do if something were to happen to you.

Eugene Roe: He gets really quiet around you. Quieter than usual. If you come in asking for help in dressing a wound, he’ll simply nod and gesture for you to take a seat. It’s almost like pulling teeth trying to get him to talk to you. He rarely opens up to you, but there was one time in Bastogne, after Hoobler died, when he saw you sitting on your own and he sat down next to you. The two of you sat in silence before he began telling you a story about his grandmother.

Lynn “Buck” Compton: He laughs you off at first, saying that there’s no way a woman could qualify to be around the rest of the guys. It doesn’t take long before he’s eating his words because his gambling gets the best of him. He bet that you couldn’t hit a target from 500 meters, and you proved him wrong. His face was better payment than the drink he bought you that night.

David Webster: He’s a bit arrogant when he sees you join. He tries to impress you all the time, but usually just ends up looking stupid. You enjoy seeing him act ridiculous, so from time to time you try to encourage this behavior just to get a laugh. You were also present during his little “they got me” incident, which you remind him of constantly.

Joe Liebgott: He did not like you when you joined, and he let you know it. He was constantly teasing you and making you feel like crap. It’s mostly because he didn’t like the idea of a woman being in the company. He figured that you were going to be a distraction to the rest of them and there’s no way that a woman should be on a battlefield. The problem with this is, his attitude towards you ended up being more of a distraction than anything else.

Donald Malarkey: He brags about himself to you all the time. You don’t mind, really, because he’s less forward about it than Webster. He also gets pretty nervous around you from time to time. Like, you can tell when he gets embarrassed because his ears get really red and he can’t make eyes contact with you. You think it’s pretty cute, and you’d never admit it, but HOT DAMN this boy’s shoulder’s are the best thing in existence.

Edward “Babe” Heffron: The most nervous of all the nervous to ever nervous. It takes him so long to have a conversation with you. Part of this is because he has a bit of a crush on you and the other part is that he knows that you could kill him in the blink of an eye, not that you would, but that thought is sitting there in the back of his mind. This shakiness continues on throughout the war, but he gets slightly more comfortable around you after Bastogne.

George Luz: A flirt if there ever was one. The difference between him and Tab is that George never underestimated what you could do. He figured if Sink was willing to bring you to the 101st, then you must be good enough to be there. He’s constantly cracking jokes and teasing you in a nice way. He’s a lot less protective than the other guys because he knows that you can hold your own and he has a lot of pride in your abilities.

Charles “Chuck” Grant: This gentleman doesn’t hesitate to accept you into the group. No worries about you being a woman. No problem with you being a world class sniper. He knows that you’re skilled and that you’re meant to be with Easy Company, and that’s all that really matters to him. However, there have been certain times where he gets a bit protective of you when the other guys get too rough or too excited.

Frank Perconte: Surprisingly, he gets really close to you. He sees how strong and determined you are and he makes a conscious decision to become a close friend of yours. He tries to take care of you to the best of his ability but he keeps his distance when he realizes that you’ve got it handled. He’s probably the closest to you out of all the guys, and the two of you stuck together through Bastogne.

Johnny Martin: He’s a dad. Just a dad. A protective, loving dad who want’s to make sure that all the guys in the company know that if they try anything with you, they’re going to have to answer to him. There was one instance where a guy from Dog Company was following you around, freaking you out a bit, and when you told Johnny about it, he walked out of his quarters, shotgun in hand. No one knows exactly what he did to that paratrooper, but one thing’s for sure, the guy never bothered you again.

#band of brothers #band of brothers headcannon #band of brothers preference #richard winters #lewis nixon #ronald speirs #carwood lipton #Shifty Powers #Floyd Talbert #bill guarnere #joe toye #bull randleman #eugene roe #buck compton #david webster #joe liebgott #donald malarkey #babe heffron #george luz #chuck grant #frank perconte #johnny martin

[uncle-ak]

What is Your Perspective?

What a time to live through… How many hundred years later?! I couldn't wrap my mind around what I saw. It was about 8pm in the evening, I was laying on the couch reading news articles, flipping between that and other articles about health and wellness. I stopped actively watching TV back in 2009 (story for another day) so reading articles to stay up to date on what’s going on in the US and around the world or reading a book is how I typically wine down during the weekdays after work especially since we have been in quarantine.

In the course of reading, I was also going between WhatsApp statuses and Instagram stories. I can’t recall where I clicked a link… First, a little background story about me related to the subject matter. I am naturally very observant, attention to details comes to me easily without trying. As such I would say I have a good visual memory. I tend to see and listen deeper; it just happens. From body language to the slightest change in pitch/tone during conversation. Because of this, I am very picky about what I watch and listen to. As such I resulted to staying updated via reading versus watching depending on the subject matter. For the same reason, I seldom watch movies about slavery, racism or anything along those lines but I sure have read a number of stories/articles, books and continue to read.

A friend visited back in April and during a conversation, she asked if I had seen the video of how Ahmaud Arbery (RIP) was murdered. I said nope thank you! I’ve read multiple articles on the story so I have an idea of how it happened. She suggested I watch it and I insisted nope thanks! My visual memory will replay it over and over. There is a part of me that can get a little too emotional even though I don’t typically wear my emotions on my sleeves. Reading Ahmaud’s story wasn’t easy to digest but I find words more palatable than images especially given the subject matter. Same with the story of Breonna Taylor (RIP), I read about it and she was murdered the day before my birthday… 

So back to clicking that link… Before being able to make sense of what was going on, I heard the words “I can’t breathe.” I immediately had a flashback of Eric Garner’s story (RIP) which I only read as well; I didn’t watch any video on purpose. My initial instinct was to exit that link but a part of me was curious, wondering and hoping that when the cop heard the words “I can’t breathe” he would get off of George Floyd or at the very least ease off the pressure. I was hopeful because my thought process was driven by the fact that I work in the healthcare system and when someone says “I can’t breathe,” everyone in the vicinity rushes in the direction of where that phrase was uttered and attends to the person. 

Initially, it didn’t occur to me that this cop was kneeling on his neck. I thought it was his shoulder or back. As he continued to say “I can’t breathe,’’ I slowly went from laying on the couch to sitting up. Then I realized the cop was kneeling on his neck, the cop had his hand in his pocket with an annoying smirk on his face while the other cop stood there like… (Let me save my words). Boy did that hurt to watch and it aches to recount it. I turned my phone away but the sound was still on. Then I couldn’t hear “I can’t breathe” anymore so I assumed the cop was off of him. That cop stayed on George Floyd even after he stopped uttering those words and wasn’t moving. For 8minutes and 46seconds... till the EMTs got there. Will it be right to assume that if the EMTs didn’t get there when they did, that cop would have been kneeling on his neck much longer? Oh, by the way, I know the cop’s name including the others, I just don’t feel like addressing them by their names because in my opinion, it isn’t worth it.

There goes my visual memory, it is actually more detailed than that but I’ll save myself the heartache. I exited the link and put my phone facedown. I sat still for a moment and tears trickled down my cheeks. I had a VERY restless night, the following day was emotionally rough and so was the rest of the week at work. As the week unfolded and more stories came out, there were moments I wished I didn’t watch that video because, for some unknown reason, it hit me differently. George Floyd presents with physical characteristics as my two younger brothers; height and obviously black! There’s no way to justify that the cop didn’t intend to kill him, but the ‘system’... Yes, I have read stories about black on black crimes being reported to be more than white on black crimes but there is more to what meets the eye with regards to reports about black on black crimes and it is no justification to brush off the killing of black people by while cops especially in the manner in which it happened in George Floyd’s case.

I wondered why in 2020; how many hundred years later, things like this are still happening. With all the evolution and civilization, I wonder how some people could still be mentally stuck in an era that viewed a certain group of people as a threat or a prey just because of their skin color. I was reminded of these books I’ve read; Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between The Lines by Dick Gregory and Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. Then I’m reminded of Trayvon Martin (RIP) as I type Trevor Noah. I love hooded sweaters and each time I put on one, Trayvon Martin crosses my mind, and depending on where I am when I have it on, sometimes I would take off for fear of being stereotyped as a threat. 

About being a BLACK Woman; I am reminded of the book We are Going to Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union, this book opened my mind’s eye to deeper and more in-depth things being brushed off in regards to black women; double minority. Then boom! Oluwatoyin Salau (RIP) was raped, reported missing, and later found dead. A young vibrant activist at the frontline of the Black Lives Matter movement. It hurt to read that she was violated and disrespected by someone like whom she fought for.

While on the emotional healing journey, the Rayshard Brooks (RIP) incident happened. Not to forget the people found hanging being ruled as 'suicide'. I'm sure there’s a lot more going on with regard to the subject matter. To say I was emotionally ‘tayad’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. Prior to this incident, I was still trying to understand the defund the police and police reform movement; the purpose, and what it entailed. Then out of curiosity, I wanted to know how long it takes to become a police officer. To put things into perspective, it takes more training time to become a barber than it takes to become a police officer (article). Even though the article isn’t as recent, has anything changed since then?!

So while my emotions have been going through this roller coaster in addition to dealing with COVID-19 as a healthcare employee; multiple deaths at work, the passing away of family friends, and family friends losing their loved ones, Sis needed mental rehabilitation. In the midst of all the chaos, I came across a video of an African Woman (apparently Cameroonian, where I am from) sharing her opinion about the unimportance of the Black Lives Matter Movement and how she wasn’t oppressed and bla bla bla. Listening to that 9minutes video initially made my blood boil, then I realized some of what she said either came from a place of lack of information and or misinformation. Then I was reminded of the Stuck in The Middle (Sitmpod) Couch Talk; The Relationship Between Africans and African Americans and Bridging The Divide. 

I would plead that my African people watch these because there seems to be a disconnect. I have read/heard comments along the lines of “it is an African-American only problem, it doesn’t concern us Africans.” Well oh well, news flash! It is a BLACK people problem which unfortunately boils down to our skin color. And if we Africans plan to have and raise kids in this country, we better wake up to the reality of what it is, educate ourselves and collectively change the narrative. I want to say how about we collectively come together and uplift the African continent, especially in this era of people tracing their heritage but that’s a conversation for another day.

During my moments of introspection following the George Floyd incident, I realized that even though I earlier wished I could unsee that video; I, however, felt that my journey to seeking knowledge and improving awareness out of the confines of a school curriculum which initially started when I was 13years old had brought me to this point. Something within me had been drastically awakened. I can’t put a finger on it but I know something is different including the desire to want to learn more and improve my society, knowledge, health, and wellness. I go between trying to stay updated, sieving through loads of information (on Instagram (IG); the only social media I’m on, and or news articles that I get notifications for) and wanting to be part of positive change. I have gone through incremental bursts of awakening, first in the Fall of 2009 when I transferred from a predominantly black community college to a four year predominantly white university, then grad school in the Fall of 2012 with the same demographic. My experience in both institutions is a story for another day… I must say grad school introduced me to a whole lot of things too fast too soon. 

At the beginning of 2013 (second semester in grad school), I read the book The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren and felt the desire to get more involved in the community. In February, while on a book club conference line, I expressed that desire and on that call was the founder of a community-based organization then known as A Friend to The Homeless today is known as Generosity Global. The Founder Rich Akwo has been a guest on the Sitmpod. My exposure while volunteering during the Selfless Saturdays from then and learning all that I learned and continue to learn among which was the importance of supporting small/local and BLACK owned businesses. Generosity Global also has a clothing line from which most of my T-shirts and sweaters are from; The All is Well/Thumbs Up clothing with positive uplifting messages to brighten my day and anyone I come across. Adding to my t-shirt and hooded sweater collecting is the SitmpodMech

 My journey to improving awareness in general and supporting BLACK owned businesses has widened thanks to the guests who have been on the Sitmpod. I do consume a number of the products and services from guests who have been on the podcast and if they provide a service/sell products that I personally do not use/need, I share via WhatsApp or IG. I must say I have learned at least one thing from ALL the guests thus far and some messages have been reiterated via different experiences and perspectives. 

From all that has unfolded thus far, I have learned a whole lot. I never knew about Juneteenth and Black Wall Street prior to now. I wasn’t aware of the laws that govern police officers and how one could pretty much blink their eyes or snap their fingers and the training to becoming an officer will be completed. It has been all that and more and the journey to learning doesn’t end here for me. It actually just intensified… 

During a recent Stuck in The Middle Couch Talk, Taalib Saber concluded with a powerful message. Watch video. 

On that note, I’ll leave you with this quote; “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery.”~ What do you understand by this quote? What have you learned from all that has been happening? What is your perspective? How do you plan to channel your acquired knowledge, experience and energy? Share your story, it will be empowering to someone else.

[gibsongirlselections]

So It Turns Out You’re a Racist

Am I a racist? Are you? People tell me I sort of have to be a racist, it’s not really my choice. Today, if you’re old, white, from the Midwest, a bit conservative, then you’re racist. Maybe you don’t say racist things specifically, and maybe you never did anything to disadvantage a black person yourself, but by original sin, you’re part of “systematic racism.“

Now maybe your immigrant parents arrived in the U.S. 75 years after slavery, or you as a white racist have trouble finding a privileged job that pays a living wage. No matter, you’re still privileged thanks to a system going back 400 years whether you like it or not. You can’t change what you are and people hate you for it. That’s the systemic part, defined as “not something that a few people choose to practice. Instead it has been a feature of the social, economic, and political systems in which we all exist.”

I’d like to say that was from the news, but in recent days I heard most of that from a close relative, and the rest from a friend of many years, neither of whom want to interact with me anymore. I’ve been sending one checks since her birthdays were in the single digits. I grew up alongside the other. They have both taken themselves out of my life because the internet told them I am a racist.

Crowd-sourced (what old timers call a mob) leftist fundamentalism has given us a country where everyone can be called a Nazi, er, racist, and dismissed. Once the red line was only actual Nazis. So no “Thank you, Elie Wiesel for that moving account. Now in rebuttal, Hitler’s deputy, Martin Bormann…” You had to be an actual Nazi to hold an opinion outside the boundaries of legitimacy.

Not any more. Racism scholar Ibram Kendi says one is now either racist or anti-racist, that there is no room for such thing as a “non-racist.” The New York Times said white allies should “Text your relatives and loved ones telling them you will not be visiting them or answering phone calls until they take significant action in supporting black lives.” Another article described my own situation, claiming “BLM protesters are breaking up with their racist, Facebook-addled relatives.” A Twitter thread about one such family dissolution had over 800,000 likes. HuffPo ran an article by a biracial woman eviscerating her white mother for being too white.

High school debate clubs used to propose a topic in advance but not assign a “side” until just before the match. The idea was you would vigorously support or attack a position you may not personally agree with. You were supposed to learn something intellectual from all this along with the ability to see things from another point of view. It is a vision of the world a long way from calling someone a witch, er, racist, and dismissing them whole.

We don’t understand debate, or its cousin compromise, anymore. There is no longer any tolerance for others’ views because the current fascism of the left does not see opinions as such; they are not acquired thoughts so much as they are innate to who we are, the inside and the outside fixed by color and class. You can’t change, only apologize, before being ignored at family gatherings, unfriended, and canceled. From the New York Times firing an editor for running an op-ed by a senator, to me wondering about the practicality of defunding the police and losing a friend over it, there is no legitimate other side. So I can’t speak, I can only whitesplain (used to be mansplain). People arbitrate my intent before I open my slack jaw. It’s even a job title—a writer at a black news site calls himself a “wypipologist.”

I am unsure where all these woke white people came from. The world around me, since George Floyd’s death, is flooded with overzealous sympathy, the media a waste can for guilt, and people who had never heard of the idea a week ago pronouncing themselves deeply committed to defunding the police. 

Companies are stumbling over each other like they just found Jesus at an AA meeting to add Black Lives Matter to their websites, just above the ad banners. The Washington Post reports that African Americans have said they’ve been overwhelmed by the number of white friends checking in, with some sending cash because guilt is an expensive hobby. White celebs are swarming to confess their past ignorance on race. In what may be the ultimate expression of shallowness, someone who calls herself an influencer and life coach posted an Instagram guide on “how to check in on your black friends.” Which corner was everyone standing in solidarity on last week?

The Slack for a hospitality company I worked for pre-COVID exploded last week when a benign HR data request went out on #BlackOutTuesday. The almost all-white staff went insane with accusations of racism. Of course, the blindsided (and now racist) HR drone didn’t think about Tuesday being some private racial Ramadan when we all fasted from reality; she doesn’t follow the right people on Twitter. The mob, sounding like they’d drunk a human growth hormone and Adderall smoothie, barked until the company issued a sort-of apology. Then they celebrated as if they’d brought George Floyd back to life.

It shouldn’t have caught HR so off guard. The unemployees live in a world where “journalism is a profession of agitation.” They were taught nothing matters more than starting a sentence with “as a… (woman, harassment survivor, deep sea diver)” because no argument, and certainly no assembled historical fact, could be more important than a single lived experience. They were brought up on TV shows that juxtaposed white and black characters like someone was stringing together magic diversity beads. They made the boss apologize even though nothing was really different except that made-up racial “holidays” are now on the list of things where there is only one allowable opinion. Soon enough we’ll all be asked over the PA to take a knee for the national anthem at sporting events.

The harsh self-righteousness oozed. It sounded very much like people wanted to imagine they were on the cutting edge of a revolution, the long-awaited (well, for four years) Reichstag fire. So what makes this moment into a turning point?

Not much. Less than taking a stand, it feels more like radical chic from people who have been cooped up for months, cut off from bars and the gym. They don’t seem to know we’ve had this week before, after the deaths of Rodney King, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and Michael Brown. The protests feel like the last round of BLM, Occupy, Pink Hats, March for Our Lives, even Live Aid in 1986 when Queen sang for everyone’s racist parents to end hunger forever. Remember in 1970 when Leonard Bernstein threw a cocktail party for the Black Panthers Defense Fund and Tom Wolfe wrote about it? That changed everything; I mean, people used to say “Negro” back then. But I’m pretty sure a year from now there will still be funded police departments.

It took some rough nights to work out the rules and root out the looters, but even as the protests have faded, the whole thing has become a set piece: the demonstrators arrive with water bottles and healthy snacks. The route is established with the police a long way from “by any means necessary” boulevard. As long as everyone enjoys their revolutionary cosplay inside the white lines, the cops don’t have to spank anyone with pepper spray. The AP describes the once violent protests outside the White House now as having a “street fair vibe.” See, it got complicated explaining how looting beer from a convenience run by Yemeni refugees was connected to racial justice.

It all reveals itself as hollow because this fight isn’t between racism and anti-racism. It’s Black Rage versus White Guilt. The cops quickly quiet down the former and the media slowly wears out the latter. That means little of the action will have much to do with the real issues but everyone will feel self-righteously better. Until next time.

Along the way, however, the collateral damage of wokeness is producing the totalitarianism it purports to challenge by denying any view that challenges it. Ideas are redefined by one side as the bad -isms of racism, sexism, fascism, and pulled out of the marketplace along with the people who want to talk about them. No invite to the barbecue, no seat at the Thanksgiving table. In a political system built on compromise, I’m not sure how we’re supposed to get things done.

For me, I am not a racist. I’ll get over my problem with lost friends. America, I’m not so sure.

Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People,Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan, and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99 Percent.

The post So It Turns Out You’re a Racist appeared first on The American Conservative.

[andrewdburton]

A candid conversation about race in America

Minneapolis, Denver, NYC, Oakland, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Louisville, San Jose, Des Moines, Detroit. The list goes on. These are just some of the cities that have experienced protests in the past week.

George Floyd's murder (and murder-porn video) was one of the catalysts for these protests. But let's be clear: Sooner or later, this was going to happen. Things are not okay in America. America's continuing issue with race, inequality, and the routine acceptance of the mistreatment of black people and other people of color came to a head in the last couple of days.

Then, we had Amy Cooper in New York City calling the police on Christian Cooper unecessarily during a normal incident that plays out all the time – annoying people with their dogs off leash. That one call could have resulted in Christian Cooper's death.

In this episode of Michelle is Money Hungry, I'm going to get candid about race in America, money and opportunity, and what's next.

This is a very difficult show for me to do because I have so many thoughts racing through my mind. The goal of this episode is to give a better perspective of what people are angry about and to leave with ideas of how we collective can do better. And, honestly, I have to say something about this. And just so you know, this is not the first time that I've talked about race and wealth in America on my website and podcast. (But it's the first time J.D. has shared my work here at Get Rich Slowly.)

J.D.'s note: I'm not a podcast listener, but I listened to this episode. I liked it enough to ask Michelle if I could re-run everything here at GRS. I'm grateful that she agreed. The text here is, essentially, Michelle's outline so it might seem rough at times. I encourage you — if you have the time — to listen to the podcast instead. If you'd rather read/listen at Michelle's site, here's the original.

This is Winning?

We are not “winning” in the US and haven't been for many years. The fact of the matter is America, at its core, is dysfunctional and its dysfunction is currently on display.

America is an incredibly wealthy country.

It's considered a land of great opportunity and compared to other countries this is the case. We just had a private company launch US based astronauts into space via SpaceX run by an immigrant But, with all of that wealth we also have a huge problem with wealth distribution. Schools are unequal. There's a lack of access to affordable health care. There's a constant threat of danger due to gun-related violence. Access to good paying jobs is decreasing as business move manufacturing off-shore/

Americans also focus on the individual vs. the collective and that affects everything related to creating policies for citizens. Then, add racism to the mix and you get a dangerous mix.

I'd like to paraphrase a couple of things that I've heard several times during the past week about the George Floyd protests.

“Why are people looting? They're tearing up businesses and their own town. Why can't they protest without damaging property? Why can't the protestors do it differently?”

“George Floyd is just 1 man, I get that this was horrible but to riot and burn down your town for one person makes no sense”

Protest as a verb: To express an objection to what someone has said or done (via the online dictionary)

I would like to point out three really important things to consider.

First, Colin Kaepernick quietly protested by kneeling for years to protest black people getting shot by the police. He lost his livelihood, was ridiculed, and was blacklisted from a career that he could still have right now. He didn't shout, he didn't break anything, he just took the knee. And, he was told that he was protesting the wrong way. Which ironically people making the comment “why riot?” should be catching themselves on. I tend wonder did you also say that he was protesting the wrong way too.

Second, it's 2020. There's video FOR EVERYTHING. While there are protestors looting, there are also groups of white people who seem organized tearing up buildings during protests. Leading other participants to ask them what the hell are they doing. In fact, that even happened here in Denver where a George Floyd demonstrator called out an Antifa asshole who was defacing a statue in front of the State Capital.

Third, why were people more concerned about the treatment of the DOG in the Amy Cooper video vs. the fact that Christian Cooper, US Citizen and a human being, could have been killed due to her actions. In case you're like who's Amy? She's the chick who called the police on Christian Cooper, the black birder in NYC.

Fourth, if the public at large values dogs and buildings more than my black life that's something we need to reflect on.

It's NOT Just about George Floyd

The protests aren't just about the murder of George Floyd. The murder was the catalyst for something that has been coming for awhile. People just weren't paying attention. The protests are about the following:

The ongoing acceptance of black people being murdered by the police (and other people) ON CAMERA and getting away with it is bullshit. And, we're not going to take this anymore.

Black people accounted for 31% of police killing victims in 2012, even though they made up just 13% of the US population.

Lack of opportunity in a land of plenty.

Deepening poverty.

The almost daily rhetoric and actions taken by the current administration to systematically eliminate people's rights.

Basically, people are fed up with everything.

The Coronavirus

Added to this anger, is the anger associated with the Coronavirus response. It has not escaped my attention that the moment the talking points were that black/brown/and old people were the individuals most likely to die from the virus the conversation about it changed.

It felt like people were willing to sacrifice me and mine so that they could get hair cuts. That's just shitty. I work for myself from home. But many people of color work in roles that require constant interaction with people, increasing the likelihood of being exposed to the Coronavirus. But, those are also the jobs that people have lost because sporting events/restaurants/and retail won't rebound for years.

Forty million people have lost their jobs and over 100,000 have lost their lives. As I watched the protests several questions came to mind about the people who were protesting.

Who knew someone who had suffered at the hands of the police?

Who had lost a job because of the virus and they had nothing else to lose?

Who knew someone who had died because of the virus or gotten sick with lifelong physical and financial reprecussions?

Who had experienced being roadblocked professionally because of the color of their skin?

Who in the crowd has health insurance? Definitely not the 40 million people who have lost their jobs

I wasn't just looking at the screen and seeing people that I didn't know and couldn't feel empathy for. I got it. I 100% get their anger because I share and I want to share a glimpse into my experience being black in America. I will also share some other people's experiences as well.

Check Your Privilege

Every year, I have at least a minimum of two incidents of white women clutching their purses when I walk by. Even when I have a giant purse on my shoulder. I've had people ignore me when I'm talking to them – blatantly. I've been roadblocked for promotions and told by the directors of the program that I worked for that they didn't feel comfortable with me representing the program abroad. I've been followed in grocery and clothing stores. I've been referenced as the angry black woman I've been called the n-word.

I have a file with all details related to my ability to vote and I am obsessive about this. Why? Because a key part of the act was invalidated in 2013, because jurisdictions are trying to levy poll taxes in order to be eligible to vote (looking at you Florida) and because of how fearful people are to allow fair and equal access to vote and how hard they work to surpress your vote. Which should tell those of you who don't vote often how important your right to vote is.

I would like to get married and have two little boys who look like their dad. But, I'm afraid of having little boys that other people feel free to: harass and kill.

Depending on the situation I'm uncomfortable when the police are around and hate it when they drive near me when I'm driving. The last thing I want to deal with is any interaction with the police.

I was sitting on a coffee shop patio with headphones on having a conversation with my mastermind group two weeks ago. There were other people on the patio talking as well. An older white woman reprimanded me for talking too loud. Don't worry, I shut it down. But my friends Sandy Smith and Elle Martinez saw the whole thing. We were on a Zoom call.

I worry about my black male relatives, male friends, and their male kids.

It is a normal thing for people of color to have a conversation with their children telling them that the police likely not protect them and more likely hurt or kill them because they are a threat.

My experience is nothing compared to what my other friends and family members have dealt with. Why is it that my full equality as a United State's citizen is perceived as a threat to your equality? It makes no sense.

America will never be as great a country as it could be as long as the following remains true:

The lack of willingness to have candid and painful conversations about race and inequality. Our unwillingness to have these conversations keep us from truly knowing one another.

The continuing growth in the divide between the haves and have nots

Lack of access to quality health care

Lack of access to fair and equal ways to vote.

We accept unequal treatment of citizens by people in positions of authority

Those who benefit from a position of power don't stand up for what's right.

Another person's success doesn't endanger you. It benefits you. I live in a nice neighborhood. During the Coronavirus outbreak (which is still happening) I would walk around the neighborhood. No one looked stressed. I would see people exercising, riding their bikes, and spending time with their kids.

Most of the people in my neighborhood work white collar jobs and — let's be candid — are white. They were having a very different experience of the Coronavirus situation than other people that I know.

They were still getting paid to work or were able to work from home. They had some resources available to them that insured that they would be able to take care of their personal expenses. Maybe not indefinitely, but for awhile. I heard or saw conversations about purchasing properties now because now would be a great time to do so. People had access to the internet and could continue to educate their kids via online learning, take fitness classes, and order food and clothing instead of going into grocery stores.

I include myself in these observations. I have these privileges too. As I improve my life, I can't lose sight of how important it is to help other people along the way. There is a reason why I am so passionate about sharing personal finance content and how people can empower themselves making money selling what they already know.What is my success if other people are suffering?

What We Can Do

There is a lot that we can do to better the situation.

When your friends of color tell you that they feel like something is racist or are sharing an experience that was painful or scary for them-listen. Don't tell them how they should feel or how they should have reacted. It's insulting. Just listen. In fact regardless of the issue active listening is an important skill to develop.

Become self-aware, we all have our prejudiced or even racist thoughts regardless of color. Becoming self-aware of these biases helps us to manage them before they adversely affect someone else.

People of color, some of your White friends might be struggling with how to have these conversations and genuinely want to be a part of the solution. (J.D., for instance.) Give them some grace as they make mistakes during the process. But, speak up so they don't make them again. I've had some incredibly candid conversations with my white friends throughout the course of our friendships. I've had to because I was unwilling to let things slide by.

And remember, actions matter more than words — and so does your inaction.

What you do when I'm not in the room when people are making jokes and comments says a lot about YOU. When people make shitty comments online-people that you know, what will you do? Will you say nothing and be complicit because it's hard to stand up for people who aren't in the room?

Basically, will you take the easy way out or do the heavy lifting which is hard. Which means you may lose friends and family.

Be patient with one another. This is a lifetime of conversations. Connect people with opportunities that will grow their income and livelihoods. Become a personal and professional mentor. If you're a cop, get rid of the racists who've embedded themselves into the force and embrace community policing which works. Write testimonials (or better record video testimonials) for a product/good/or service that a POC friend has. That POC friend could do the same.

What Has Encouraged Me

Here's what has given me encouragement and hope recently:

The line of white women who used their privilege and stood in front of black protestors so that they wouldn't be harmed by the police.

The police who marched with protestors. This happened in a number of cities.

The black men who protected a police officer who got separated from his crew.

The Denver protester who was filmed calling out a person who was defacing the statue in front of the Colorado State Capital.

The often painful conversations and revelations that have been shared. We can't keep these things to ourselves.

The actions that people have taken. Speaking up, shutting things down, and being all in.

The love that has been sent my way from my friends of all colors who have checked on me and that I've checked on during this time. I've chosen well.

Figure out the answer to the following question “How does someone else doing well affect me?” There are a lot of people expending a lot of energy keeping people down. So you have to wonder why they fear people being equal or doing well.

Thank you for listening to the show, and I hope that you and yours are safe and well during these difficult times.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/race-in-america/ via http://www.rssmix.com/