Weaver's Web

Watching what is happening in the streets across this country where the police and where people of privilege are lashing out at demonstrators, even peaceful demonstrators, the reason for those demonstrations is crystal clear in my mind. It is becoming clearer to many others as well, as evidenced by the number of people out marching who are not people of color.

I am troubled at the number of demonstrators that are being beaten by the police and moreover there seem to be no shortage of videos on line where the demonstrators being beaten are people of color while white demonstrators around them look on in horror, only getting struck when they try to intervene to stop the abuse.

This is not to say that white people are not being targeted at all for protesting. I am saying that the white 17 y/o that’s been charged in the Kenosha shootings walked right past police and went home to Illinois. Had a black 17 y/o been carrying a long gun, he wouldn’t have been apprehended at the scene either. He would have been shot. That’s the state of this country. A black child cannot play with a toy gun without it endangering his or her life.

We glorify weapons in this county and deny them to our underclass. That glorification must end. And we must do what we can to end the permanence of people being consigned to a lower class simply because of circumstances of race, ethnicity, gender, faith, orientation or sexual identity.

Black lives matter.
Brown lives matter.
Trans lives matter.
Lesbian & gay lives matter.
Muslim lives matter.
Jewish lives matter.
Sikh lives matter.
Asian lives matter.
Women’s lives matter.
Aboriginal lives matter.

Until we recognize the validity of each of these, we have absolutely no right to insist that all lives matter.