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Communique #11

I can't breath

 Reflecting on the horrendous scene in Minneapolis, “I can’t breath”.  I think of the disproportionate number of people of color who get sick and die from Covid-19.  I think of the respirators pushing oxygen into the lungs of people who are horrible sick.  “I can’t breathe” and I think of the lack of good health care in the Inter-cities and among the rural poor in the United States.  Before the pandemic this was just normal.  With people in the streets there is hope for a new normal.

Still, I am seventy-one years old and this racial hatred has been present my whole life.  I have seen its many manifestations, a numbing number of means of disadvantaging the other.  I have seen how it has been used for political gain.  Everywhere I have lived, it lives, North, South and West.  When I took the white supremacy in Oregon course I felt overwhelmed by the relentless discrimination, it has so many heads.  I don’t know if it can be changed, it has been so persistent; it has shaped geography and mental spaces. “I can’t breath” it is so deep rooted, such a long history.  Good that so many are in the streets, these young people give me hope a dialogue about this scourge is long overdue.

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