Can We Change?

I thought I was worried about living through a pandemic, I thought that would be the story that would carry 2020. I thought surely 100,000 Americans losing their lives would be the story, that this loss would be what we would have to overcome. But there's a deeper story, as there has been for hundreds of years in America. Every few years we rise up when we are forced to - when we can't accept the horrific video that we see again and again. We rise up and say, No more, this has to change. And then we get distracted by the next news cycle, by the next breaking story and we put this away, with a bandaid on it and we move on. The problem is, it's always there, it's always bubbling below the surface because we've never truly dealt with racism in America. Other than volunteering and voting, other than living my life transparently and ethically and lovingly, I personally don't know how to create change and I also don't feel like America is with me on wanting to change, and that flat out breaks my heart. Full disclosure, my husband is African-American. We've been together for almost 25 years and there hasn't been a day I haven't worried about his safety, that he may not come home one day. And so here we are, the world is literally fighting a pandemic. Our country is literally fighting a pandemic and you would hope that we'd find a way to come together - that we'd look around and see what's happening and wear the masks, and social distance and see that we needed to change. But how can we come together? How can we change? If we can't find ways to live together without fear, without animosity, without hatred, without people of color being murdered daily in our streets, how on earth do we think we will come together to fight a pandemic? We are so divided, we are so angry, we are so scared of each other, and I think worst of all we don't know what to do to fix it, or how to even truly address systemic racism, so we do nothing and hope change somehow happens. We're all smart enough to know that's not going to happen. So here we are. We have brutally murdered another African-American man. We have forever changed his story, his family's story, his friends and his coworkers story. So we rise up, as we should, we take action, we write, we protest, we say we need to change, we demand we need to change. But will we change? Like the pandemic, the unbearable murder of George Floyd has presented all of us with the ultimate call to action: change or more people will die.