By Pastor R Z Baaith
“And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.” (Romans 13:11)
The horrible and deliberate murder, seen all over the world, of George Floyd has proven a number of realities. Among them is the fact that there are individuals in our police departments who view the life of people of color in general and African Americans in particular as having no value.
These officers view our lives with an arrogant disdain coupled with a racist contempt. How else could someone intentionally crush the life out of another human being in public and in full view of witnesses? Even at times looking those witnesses in the eye with a cold derisive stare while pressing as hard as possible on the victim’s neck.
Anyone with any modicum of decency in them, with any touch of humanity, any compassion at all would have to be distraught, repulsed and angry with every ounce of their being. Especially us, especially African American persons. But in truth any person. It was and is way past time that we marched and protested and demonstrated with real power. It should have happened several murders past.
We had to rise up and let the world know enough was enough and if we had to die in the streets; we were not going to let ourselves be murdered just because.
So we have and not us alone. The whole world has risen with us because the whole world has been witness to the unending deaths of Black men and women and children by morally corrupt cops. The death of George Floyd, forever able to be viewed with the physical eye, (although once seen, the mind puts the images in a file of constant recall) captured because of digital magic.
But here is where we are now. We have energy, passion, determination and we need to push past street activism into policy evolvement. We have to connect the daily struggles and social denials in our lives to the seemingly unending place of denial we are in.
We need to organize around specific issues of local politics, local education/schools, local “minority” business development and local law enforcement issues. Obama is correct when he says we need a new generation of activists who know their communities and what those communities need. He is equally on point when he says despite particular communities having some well defined local concerns, there are commonalities in all of our communities.
So much so I believe we could advance a national agenda to address them.
If we do not push the moment forward by moving from reaction orientation to strategy implementation, we will find ourselves in a very short time again bemoaning an inhumane death of one of us caused by someone in uniform who does not see us as persons or our lives having any real value.
One thing more. We cannot let others steal this momentum or change the dynamic of our expression. There are those marching with us who are not of us. They have their own agenda; we have to be careful and expose them when needed.
Keep protesting, keep marching, if that’s where your heart is, but let’s start planning!