Sweatshirts, Snacks, Cash

Image by @brandychieco

A couple weeks ago my kids were leaving the apartment for the day. It was cool outside and as I had done a thousand times before I went through my checklist with them at the door. Sweatshirts, snacks, cash, Purell? But at that moment it struck me that this time was very different. They weren't going to the park, to a friends house or a party. They were going to a protest in the first fraught and dangerous couple days of the Black Lives Movement. Although they are 19 and 23 they will always be my ‘kids’ and I was terrified. I'd watched enough news reports to see that peaceful protesting was not enough to protect you from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that the repercussions could be dangerous.

I wanted to ask them not to go but at that moment I realized my checklist for that day or any other day was nothing compared to ‘the talk’ that most African-American parents need to have with their children on how to conduct themselves in public. Not just on how to cross safely or show manners but to stay alive. I imagined what it must feel like to add those additional and very real fears to the ones that I already lived with as a parent. And I realized, in light of everything we had been seeing lately and that had been going on in Black communities for years, it was enough. That it was all of our  fight. That all the kids are our kids and if I  have to make small sacrifices for systematic change to finally occur then so be it. Think of the phrase Black Lives Matter. Mattering is asking for the bare minimum. The movement is asking for basic human rights that white people take for granted. So we will continue to protests, we will continue to vote but more importantly we will educate ourselves on what we have not been seeing. Because our inaction is an action.

http://www.cupofcatherine.com/2020/06/15/black-lives-matter-antiracism-resources/