Between Rocks and the Hard Place

"The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth" - African proverb.

In another effort to leverage the beauty of facts, I'd like to point out the deeply racist roots of the chestnut shared by our President on Twitter yesterday: "Once the looting starts, the shooting starts" -- that phrase came from a violently racist police chief in Miami, Walter Headley, who was on the wrong side of the civil rights movement. Bravo to Twitter for taking a stand against this glorification of violence.

So, anyone who watched the President's birther movement conspiracies or his injecting himself into the wrongful prosecution of the Central Park Five and decided he wasn't racist -- cool -- just make sure you're watching today. Maybe you don't believe his ex-wife Ivana's claims that he kept and read a book of Hitler's speeches next to his bed. But look at the playbook he's using now. He's not using the healing words of Martin Luther King Jr., he's not looking to cobble together creative thoughts of his own. A man who looked at the murderous intention and execution by white nationalists in Charlottesville (the turning point that motivated Joe Biden to run), and saw "Good People on Both Sides" - the President that publicly supported and encouraged the armed and dangerous protests of his supporters in Michigan - now sees an opportunity to conflate the same rage and frustration fueling Minneapolis citizens to both peaceful and riotous actions into one bucket of "Thugs".

I have a bunch of friends on here who are conservatives. I love you guys. Honestly, I do. I've made friends who are amazing members of their local police forces. I am so grateful they wake up everyday, put themselves in harms way, and keep their communities safe. But we gotta do better. Over the last decade, the Republican Party has increasingly become a safe space for dangerous and racist thought and policy. Over the course of American history, the Police have been a pawn in the militarized and systemic surveillance, incarceration, and extermination of black skin.

While a handful of you have reached out to me encouraging me to separate my fear and frustration from politics, I hope you can see how dangerously interlinked they are by the responses or lack there of we've seen so far from Government, from on the ground in Minneapolis all the way up to the White House. My post from earlier this week calmly called on the right to philosophize a way they can be part of the solution. In a nation of such abundance, there shouldn't be the need for your rights to vote to protect your wallet or your political interests to be diametrically opposed to my right to walk down the street without an increasing fear of each siren.

So, friends on the right, it is time to stand up and pledge your allegiance to the extraction of hate from your ranks. It is time to denounce our racist in chief. Loudly. Now.

Time is running out to truly be considered an ally, or in any way not an active and unmoving part of the problem as an overwhelming influx of media, 911 calls, and kaleidoscopic multi-angle video of black extermination flood the internet.

Friends on the left, continue to challenge your deeply held beliefs and biases. Talk to your friends, of all creeds and colors, and question what is happening. The liberal friend who posts a 1/2 dozen heartfelt drawings of George Floyd and "Justice for George Floyd" posts and does nothing else is the new version of conservative "Thoughts and Prayers" after mass shootings.

In a ten minute video, we all watched the execution of an American citizen. No less fatal than the beheadings of Isis, no less tragic for the friends and family of the murdered.

We've seen the action. Now it's time for the organized and decisive reaction. I'm not saying it's a time for violence or unchecked rage. But I understand it. Chaos loves a vacuum and in the absence of clear leadership and clear action, it will not stop. It can't. Because we're heartbroken, we're afraid, and we feel weight of the powder keg that is living as a black American in 2020. As economic, political, and societal rocks stack up around us, we are stuck between those rocks and the hard place.