We All Need to Support Black Lives Matter

I sometimes consider changing the name of this blog.  When I first, many, many years ago thought of the blog (before it became a daily thing during college), I thought this would be for my thoughts in a way that I didn't really see yet on the internet.  Blogs obviously existed in 2005, but not to the degree they would have, and this is before Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, and even (to most people that weren't college students at the time) Facebook.  There wasn't an expectation that you would regularly be bringing your feelings to the internet, and that's kind of what I wanted this to be.  I didn't have a lot of people in my life that shared my interests, and I was a young man with a lot of passion for topics that felt idiosyncratic or unpopular (I was a very progressive guy, more so than my friend groups at the time would've been).

In the years since, I've thought about changing the name, and honestly, I think I will at some point because "ranting" has such a pejorative connotation, and also because I don't talk about my feelings that much here anymore.  This is a personal blog in the sense that it's expressing my thoughts and analysis, but it's almost entirely focused on film and elections analysis.  That's the point, and I like it that way.  I feel better about the direction of the blog than I have in years, and readership, while still curated, feels authentic-I get to interact with more readers through the comments section and the blog's social media than I have in years (and I love the interactions).

Which is a long way of saying that I didn't intend to write about the Twin Cities protests of the past week.  For starters, I didn't know an angle that hasn't already been said.  I am not in a place, emotionally, where I can write about this from the clinical angle of elections analysis-I do think there could be some impact on the political future of people like Tim Walz & Jacob Frey, I do think that there will be more pressure on Joe Biden to pick a woman-of-color & there will be a harsher lens on anyone with a criminal justice background he might pick, and I am curious to see how Donald Trump, who has made "Law & Order" (or his racist version of it) a battle cry throughout his presidency, will try to use the fear of the past week to his advantage.

But this is my home-I have lived in the Twin Cities for almost 16 years.  I've walked on the corner where George Floyd died multiple times.  I lived in the Midway, center of many of the protests, for four years.  I have shopped at the stores that have been looted, and openly wept when I saw my favorite bookstore in the Twin Cities had been burned to the ground, a creative oasis that has filled the bookshelves of the library I'm typing this article in.  I have checked out books from the East Lake Library-it is a daunting, gut-wrenching time where I couldn't even sleep last night, and don't know how I'll return to work & life this week, striving for a normalcy that might never come to pass.

And here's where the greatest conundrum is for me with this being a personal blog-I don't think that my voice should be heard above or even next to others, even on a blog where my voice is the only one that is writing.  Because while I mourn for my home being burned over the past week, the true priority here is making sure that George Floyd is the last.  That the sacrifice that George Floyd made, the life that was ripped from him by a murderous police officer, is not just honored through memory & protest, but through action.  As a white man, I'm not comfortable with sharing how this moment is affecting me, but I also don't want to be silent-I don't want to just "stand by."

The time has come for criminal justice reform in this country.  White people need to acknowledge that the experiences they have with law enforcement are not the same of those experienced by communities of color, and particularly by African-American men.  We need to admit that there is a racist problem running through the heart of many police precincts, and we need to say it without providing an out or a clause.  There needs to be no "but most cops are good" or give in to any sort of "both sides" argument.  The system is broken if the worst thing that a white person fears when getting a pulled over is a ticket and the worst thing that a black person fears when getting pulled over is becoming a hashtag.  The system is broken when white protesters can storm the Michigan State Capitol with guns and all they receive are verbal warnings, and black protesters are tear-gassed just for standing in the street.  The system is broken when we see journalists arrested and shot at by police officers, and we know that they are going to receive no punishment for their behavior, even in a city with a liberal mayor and a state with a progressive governor.

It is not enough to just say "don't forget to vote" when we still deny felons who have served their time the right to vote in this country, and those former inmates are disproportionately from communities of color.  White people need to confront their own prejudices.  They need to admit that systematic racism is something that they contribute toward, even if it's not something they created, by ignoring this issue when they cast ballots, when they vote on school referendums, when they live their day-to-day lives.  It's hard not to think of Amy Cooper this week as well-a woman who was not a MAGA-thumping Trump supporter, but instead a "progressive" who had donated to John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Pete Buttigieg...and in a moment where a black man told her she was breaking the law, she decided to lean into racism & abuse her privilege rather than actually support the "progressive" beliefs she claimed to espouse.

It's time for white people to be uncomfortable.  It's time for us to address racism when it's uttered at Thanksgiving rather than just eating another bite of mashed potatoes, hoping that the topic quickly shifts to the football game.  It's time for us to acknowledge that institutions like law enforcement don't work in their current state, even if they work for us.  And it is time for criminal justice reform in this country, and for us to stand behind only candidates who support such endeavors.  If you see what happened to George Floyd, and your instinct is anything other than "that's wrong, I need to help, and I need to listen to the communities of color who are telling me the ways that this can be solved," you need to fight that instinct.  White people need to acknowledge that we live in a country where freedom & justice are not possible until Black Lives Matter, and right now our judicial and law enforcement system doesn't honor that ethos.