Hello, I'm Cat
McIntyre, a member of the BUF Black Lives Matter Ministry Action
Team.
I
joined the Black Lives Matters Team at BUF three years ago, precisely
because of experiences such as those we all have seen playing out
recently:
Ahmaud
Arbery, shot to death, while running, by vigilantes in Georgia;
Brionna
Taylor, shot eight times by police in her Louisville KY home; and
George
Floyd, asphyxiated by a police officer kneeling on his neck for over
eight minutes in Minneapolis.
Am
I shocked by these stories and images? No.
Why?
Because these are familiar
tragedies. Black people in America are always in danger from the very
system that is supposed to protect us akk. When these injustices
result in death, and are caught on film, they make the news because
they have shock value. But they are simply extreme cases of the
daily mistreatment that black people, especially black men,
experience in America.
I
am not shocked because I have endeavored, with Black Lives Matter, to
listen to black people when they tell their experience, and to learn
as much as I can about the deep injustices in my nation.
Cory
Booker, a black politician I much admire, says, "If America
hasn't broken your heart, you don't love her enough."
I
do love America, and my heart has been broken deeply by what I now
know about America's structural racism. As Cory Booker says, "It
takes great love of country to point out and to act to end
institutionalized racism in America...We cannot allow our inability
to do everything
about the problem of racism to stop us from doing more than we are
right now....If we
are not changing, nothing will change."
I
can not ignor, excuse or deny these familiar tragedies, because
ignoring, excusing and denying them will not stop them happening
again and again.
All
these deaths and the anger they generate across the nation pile on
top of our current experience of coronavirus. The disease has
revealed, in stark relief. the inequities in our health care system,
our economic system, and our criminal justice system
This
eracism minute has already gone on more than a minute. But, I
believe I am not alone in being broken hearted by what's been going
on in our county.
Please
join us at our Black Lives Matter zoom meeting tomorrow evening at 6
pm to explore these matters in more depth. I will send you a link to
the meeting if you request, and promise we will end before Taizé at
7.
