Black men being lynched by white men in daylight, with witnesses. Still. It is not O.K.
Black mothers of black boys unable to keep them safe once they walk out the door. It is not O.K.
Navaho Nation deaths from coronavirus way higher by comparison because they are historically denied access to clean water and adequate health care. It is not O.K.
Privatized prisons, a whole new industry, bulging with black men put there by white society as a substitute for slavery, causing their sons to grow up without fathers or stable communities, and the fathers to be denied the right to vote, further disempowering them. It is not O.K
Cities like Baltimore with skyscraper downtowns and yet whole blocks of apartment buildings boarded up, as if black and brown people didn’t need housing, and no one held accountable for redlining and slumlords. It is not O.K.
Children with Spanish names in cages and no one knows where their parents are, while the parents are in tent cities (concentration camps) or in freezing, dirty ICE detention cells until they are deported with or without their children. Whole families fleeing death in their home countries forced back across the border to camp out in Mexico, prey for gangs and extortionists. It is not O.K.
“Essential workers” (now we find out just how essential) who aren’t paid a living wage. They keep us alive but we don’t keep them alive. It is not O.K.
War is not O.K. Climate change denial is not O.K. Upgrading nuclear weapons instead of abolishing them is not O.K. A foreign policy based on exploitation instead of sharing is not O.K.
We have become, or always were, a country without a moral compass. Yes, there are good people, neighbors who help neighbors through floods and fires, who sew masks and give them away, medical and nursing home staff who labor to save the rest of us from the deadly virus.
But our country is not O.K.
I am not O.K. as long as these things happen in my name. It IS my country, and I have to take responsibility. I want these words to make a difference. But words can’t jump off the page and create magic. Actions to take? Now? With a paralyzing pandemic? Yes.
We have a history of resistance and it will continue. Let’s be sure we are part of it. Locally, we took a step towards justice when we protested the killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd on Greenfield Town Common last Saturday. For the long, urgent haul ahead, we can join national movements like The Poor People’s Campaign, the Sunrise Movement, racial and environmental justice groups. It is harder during the pandemic. I get discouraged, too. Yet, the lynchings must stop; racism and militarism must stop. Destruction of our natural world must stop. We have to find a better way to be America.
Sherrill Hogen lives in Charlemont.