In my home state of Arizona, the only reason today is recognized as a holiday is: the NFL rescinded the Super Bowl in the 90s because we didn’t recognize it. Magically, we had a change of heart.
(It was “them” not “we” at the time—I didn’t live here yet—but we still tend to be in the news for impressively ignorant things.)
I have a lot of thoughts about today …
…about the incident at the protest the other day…
…about the exaltation of good people to “infallible”…
…about the state of race relations in this country…
…and all of the other “other” relations in this country…
…about how people speaking out for social justice are supposed to turn the other cheek while the denigration and exploitation of people in this country (to say nothing of elsewhere) rises at an alarming rate…
…about how I have the privilege with most of these issues to think about them and deal with them when I have time and energy because they don’t affect me directly…
…about how my employer is putting us through Deep Equity training, and what it’s like and what it means…
And I couldn’t tease it all out and come up with a post that didn’t wind all over the place (bring Dramamine!) or get ranty (I do try to limit rants and there was one just yesterday and a bit of one the day before).
I wanted an end product that was strong, thoughtful, and maybe would make one person think twice about any one of the myriad of issues that are part of all of this.
So instead, I just ask: when you see injustice, speak up.
You would want help if you were on the losing side of any of those battles.
Let your mind be changed by people who are walking the walk. You don’t know more about someone else’s experience than they do.