break/down

I lay in bed last night with a racing mind and a heavy heart. Another day, another devastating news cycle. When I can't sleep, it's often a good idea to start writing down the words that are whipping around in my head like a hurricane. I wanted to share what I wrote last night, in all its imperfection, with the clear understanding that my voice is full of heartfelt empathy, as inexperienced in this topic as it may be.

Charlotte. Tulsa. New York City. Ferguson. ____________. ____________. ____________. My memory and trouble with details doesn't make me the best witness, but how can anyone be expected to even keep up?

As incensed, outraged, and scared as I am, it is still an abstract fear. I have the privilege of that abstraction. I am not raising a child with brown skin. My husband is not a Black man. I do not see dark skin when I look in the mirror.

How can you who are in those realities be going about life right now? How do you deal with the nearly daily news that the freedoms and ideals so proudly held by your country are being deprived of countrymen who look like you? "Land of the free and the home of the brave." Is this a mockery, a rub of salt in the wound that is the state of our current criminal justice system?

This is not my reality, yet with every swipe of my Facebook feed, I feel on the precipice of a breakdown. I read hateful, vile comments and wonder what these people can't see.

Break it down:

• people of color are dying at the hands of police, unjustly

• protests are needed, if a damn silent protest is offensive to you, you're not thinking about the REAL ISSUE AT HAND

• our system calls for a process-- not immediate punishment on site by law enforcement

• children are children, and brown-skinned children are routinely perceived as older and bigger than they really are

• PEOPLE OF COLOR ARE BEING MURDERED

What can we do?

If you're not following Shaun King on social media and any of this made sense to you, or if you heartily disagree with what I'm saying but are the teensiest bit open to hearing a different perspective than your own, you should be reading what he has to say and seeing the stories that he shares from around this country of ours. I'm not well-versed in other platforms, but you can find him on Facebook here. He is a, perhaps, the prominent voice in this current round of the Civil Rights Movement.