#BlackLivesMatter

#BlackWomenMatter

#BrownLivesMatter

#WeAreTheNinetyNinePercent

#TheWorldIsOurs

I swear, I just wanted to be a good student, a good son, a good partner to the woman I love who will one day make a great lawyer fighting for just decisions when people have disputes. I want to read books and learn all I can about our history and morality so that I can help us to progress into brighter tomorrows. I would prefer not to stick out and I would prefer to be remembered only by those who love me. However, I was once told that if I do not hear what needs to be said then I need to say it, and if I do not see what needs to be done, then I need to do it.

I cannot just sit still while people are being murdered as the result of generations of oppression; there is state sanctioned violence that is occurring with impunity and at increasing rates; while our people are being imprisoned and reduced to slaves at rates never before witnessed in history; the wage gap is approaching catastrophic proportions; we are being forced to kill our planet; the United States government is either directly involved or indirectly allowing the systematic eradication of entire peoples and cultures; and our elected government is complicit in, if not responsible for it all.

We as a people have been disarmed and made docile. We have been desensitized to the horrors of these regimes of terror that we call governments. They parade under the false pretense that they are here to serve the people and are just as much victim to this system as the rest of us. The system is like a train rushing into a traffic-jammed train station with no breaks and no way off the tracks. The system is propelling forward onto our demise by pure volition alone and no one in the conductor’s booth knows how to bring it to a halt.  The powers that be are just doing the best they can to keep the train steady and the passengers calm as we collide into the end of our existence. Screaming through the door or at our politicians and corporations makes no difference because they do not want to hear what we have to say no matter how intelligent and right we may actually be.

We tell them to stop killing innocent black people and what do they do? They kill more innocent black people. We tell them we want more equity in our schools and what do they do? They strip what equity was left in the schools from them. We tell them that there are alternative forms of energy production that are sustainable and less harmful than the ones that are destroying our planet and leading to climate change, and what do they do? They arrest the people who tell them this, suppress the alternatives, kill the people protecting their lands and continue to mine and drill for fossil fuels. We tell them that we do not want our country in any more wars because we are tired of all the senseless and unjustified killings and what do they do? They hire other countries to do their dirty work for them, create drones and continue the bombing, or just ignore the people outright and continue with their wars. No, they do not hear us and they do not want to hear us.

We cannot afford to do nothing because of where we are heading without doing anything. I do not know what needs to be done. I do not even know what can be done to change the circumstances of the situations that our people all over the planet are facing, but what I do know is that we cannot allow this to continue. What I know is that the powers that be want us to be divided. They want us to be locked in continual strife among ourselves and to not focus our attention on our true foes, our true oppressors. And while we have focused our attention on our petty differences they have placed military forces in our path and instilled plausible deniability into their laws and trained assassins who falsely believe they are protecting order, but in reality are only maintaining injustice. The challenge is not an easy one that we face, but it is a vital challenge that must be met.