So, The Revolution Has Begun. Time to Pick a Side.

Minneapolis, 2020. Credit: Associated Press.

I'm angry and I'm exhausted. So, I'm gonna keep this short.

I'm angry that George Floyd died an unnecessary death, another black man murdered by the police. This was only weeks after a black woman, Breonna Taylor, was killed in her home on a mistaken search warrant - unarmed and shot shot seven times. Her death was only days after two "vigilante" white men gunned down Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia. He was out jogging. I'm so very exhausted by all of this. I'm tired of seeing innocent black men, women, and nonbinary folks killed for nothing more than the color of their skin. I'm angry and I'm exhausted.

If you're an American with a set of eyes and ears, hopefully - I pray - you are angry and tired too.

And yet, if you're white like I am, you don't have to live with it. You don't live in fear that you could be killed while jogging, or sleeping, or buying something at the gas station. You do not live in fear. I do not live in fear.

I can't even begin to imagine how angry and exhausted those who do live in fear are right now.

So, I can only speak for myself, as a white man, about what we need to do. If you're a white reader, I encourage you to listen.

What's happening in every city in America right now is not a riot. It is a rebellion, and it is quickly giving way to a revolution. For some, I'm sure that idea scares you. I'm sure the images of looting and burning that flash across your screens scare you. I'm sure that in the midst of a global pandemic and a faltering economy, there's nothing more many of you'd like than for the world to go back to normal.

Well, I hope it doesn't. 

Normal means that four police officers can restrain a man and choke him for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, until he's using his last gulps of air to cry out for his "mama." George Floyd's mother died two years ago. He knew he was going to join her. His cause of death? The disease of complacency.

Normal equals complacent. And complacency is what killed George Floyd. It's what killed Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Terence Crutcher, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, John Crawford III, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, and Trayvon Martin. 

Those are simply some recent names I can remember off the top of my head at 1 a.m. Complacency has claimed millions of others over the last four hundred years. Far too many to name. Tamir and Trayvon may be children, but they are not exceptional victims of complacency. Emmett Till was lynched just as they were in 1955. I'm asking, very seriously, has our treatment of that disease changed all that much in the sixty-five years since then? Now, more than ever, it is clear to me that it has not.

As I see it, there are two paths ahead: The first, to give into the disease of complacency. The second, more shocking option, to burn it all down.

There is no middle ground.

You might think there is. But, for once, there isn't.

To go along the first path - to go "back to normal" - is to allow the worst of humanity to prevail.

To take the second path - to burn it all down - is to not only believe in change and hope, but to manifest it.

We live in a country where the rapists and racists controlling the highest offices are able to rack up billions while the citizens they halfheartedly pretend to represent are being killed in the streets by paramilitary police forces. Where doctors aren't given proper medical supplies and vital women's healthcare is deemed illegal. Where children are being taught how to shelter themselves from storms of bullets, while veterans who have already faced fire-fights are living and dying on the streets. Where native peoples' land is being further torn asunder for pipelines that serve to do nothing more than rush life on Earth to the brink of extinction. Where citizens’ votes are treated like baseball cards and the highest-stake issues of our "democracy" are left to the corporate gamblers who can't even keep their hands covered. Where 80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and a single parking ticket can mean the difference between making or missing rent. Where we are forced to blindly swallow "American values" as every other conceivable alternative for governance and economics is demonized. Where Nazis marching in the street are heralded by leaders, while members of anti-fascist groups are denounced as terrorists. Where we shake our heads at looters, while erasing the history of looting that built and bought the very land we walk on. Where we unfailingly ensure that power stays in the hands of white straight men and no one else. Where we pride ourselves on leading the world, but our only area of expertise seems to be keeping people in cages. If you really think that we're in the streets simply because of George Floyd, you're not only blind - you're sick with the disease of complacency.

The only way to move forward is to burn it all down. And no, I don't necessarily mean literally. (Although I find great joy in seeing a courthouse in Tennessee burn only months after the same system decided that gay couples weren't fit to adopt children. And I do think many things should burn, like all of the Confederate statues and just about every single police precinct.) But what I really mean is that we need to tear the system down and start almost entirely anew.

It's a terrifying and equally confusing prospect. It's a process that will result in countless deaths and billions, if not trillions, of dollars in damage. It is, in fact, a revolution. But to deny that we need it is heresy to humanity. If we go back now, what then will all the lives lost and damage done have been for? Naught.

The only way out is to plow forward. It's to take the best parts of what we have, hold on tightly to them, and burn through all of the diseased parts of the system. We mustn't let our anger and our exhaustion get the better of us. We must not be worn down. We must stay in the streets. We must retake the offices and the courthouses. We must, proverbially and literally speaking, burn it down.

If you're still not convinced, sit in silence for eight minutes and forty-six seconds and ask yourself what you can do to help or why you're too afraid to try. 

For then you will see that the only cure for complacency is change.

"Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore."

-Ray Bradbury, 1953

I'll be taking all comments, concerns, and calls to action at toddp72@gmail.com.