So most of my thoughts and opinions on everything that has been going on has been posted on my Facebook, between sharing the inequalities of the country and the overbearing police actions on the citizens of this country. Today, I was moved to write more than is easily done on Facebook.
This country has failed so many of its citizens. This country has systematically abused so many.
I am just one person, and with my asthma, I have only said things online, unable to be in the streets. I have not been able to justify risking my life to stand with those who continue to be beaten down.
This week, Hamilton became available to watch online. Now, I have listened to the soundtrack, been moved to goosebumps listening to the history that this country has gone through. Watching the play, and seeing the actual visuals, showed me the very important point.
Now, back in the time of the colonists, the majority of the country was run by white men. Seeing the musical with mostly people of color brought the very, VERY important similarities between what happened then and what is happening now.
I have had a really difficult time with everything going on, because I am very aware of my privilege as a white female from a "good" family. Growing up, my grandmother always considered us "upper class", constantly reminding me that it is important what other people think of us. It is important to make sure that we don't allow people to know the family problems, and that longtime repetition of "we don't talk about those things" has been detrimental to me in many ways. I didn't get help for my depression until I was forced to by people who loved me, who saw me struggle and give up on caring
about my life and where I was going. I didn't start to heal from my past until I was shown unconditional love by people who had no blood reason to do so. I have spent a good portion of my life making myself smaller for people who could not fathom the depth of my thoughts and emotions. I am ashamed of that. I let myself be limited to not offend "important" people.
When all of this started, with the pandemic started people going up in arms over keeping their fellow citizens safe, their countrymen and women who are at risk, because of inconvenience, I was annoyed as a person who is considered a higher risk. I was upset with the people so inconsiderate of the people that live in the world with them. When, 2 weeks later, the police killed a black man under the guise of protecting the country from a "criminal", a police officer kneeling on his neck as he plead for his life, until he was dead. His crime? Possibly giving a fake $20 bill.
Is that what our country is? We are more concerned over a potentially fake 20, while companies consistently underpay their workers, over work their employees until it is too hard for them to fight for their wages, much like the slaves in the times of ancient Egypt, working them into submission. But that is a completely different fight than what we are currently fighting for.
The police have long been getting more power, with less training than our military, while still having access to many of the same artillery and forces. As the first few weeks of the protests showed, the police have taken their power of the citizenry to frighteningly overbearing lengths, committing war crimes, making America one of the most dangerous places for journalists for the first time in a very long time.
Do I know everything about the situations? No, because I wasn't there. I don't know what compelled the police, who are supposed to enforce the law, to decide to commit WAR CRIMES, to attack journalists who are there to witness the events, to attack and destroy medical supplies for protestors including medical personnel.
I have never felt as scared for the safety of my loved ones. I have never felt so utterly sickened, to the point of actually throwing up at the President's response to what has happened, by saying that the police weren't going far enough.
I didn't have the words to properly express my pain, my utter distaste and fear at the appalling behavior of our government in this time where we should all rise together to be better. In the past 48 hours since Hamilton became available to watch, I have watched/ listened to it 4 times in its entirety. The most recent time, I was driving on the highway, watching as the fireworks exploded around the highway, as the song "History has its eyes on you" played, and I cried in anger, knowing that this kind of injustice, or overbearing need for control by a "leader" was exactly WHY they felt the need to rise up against the oppression of the King, why they felt that the only course of action was to remove the government in favor of one that actually cared about the needs of the people and not just the money that the people could make for it.
It was a good idea, great even, and the idea of a leader changing by the choice and voice of its governed people was not something that happened then.
Unfortunately, this country has forgotten these hard learned lessons. This country's leader has ignored the part of history where the citizens take the rule of the country into their own hands, and fight for what is right, just, fair.
I have not been one to make a lot of waves, holding my beliefs without pressuring them on others because I believe that it is everyone's right to choose what to believe. However, as more and more people are showing that what they choose to believe is that they are better than others because of health or skin color, the more angry I get. The more helpless I feel. Listening to Hamilton has reminded me that while I am not in the streets fighting with my loved ones for their right to live, while my voice is small as a woman from a small town where who you know matters and what you do is easily swept away with the right friends or family, I still have a voice. I still have the ability to think and speak for those who don't.
I have never felt so moved as I did last night, listening to the words on Independence Day, reminding me that history does, in fact, have its eyes on me, on all of us. I have never felt as passionately about fighting for the right cause, for making the lives of those around me who do not benefit in the ways that I have in this world a little bit easier.
I have had people tell me that I have been helpful in sharing everything that I find, and trying to be as fair as possible. When I see good things, I share them, and if it turns out those good things were to detract from the bad that happens later by the same people, I share that too. I have not been silent, I have made it very clear that when you are discriminating against people of color, you are discriminating against my family, my friends, the people that I love and respect.
There were a number of people who did not realize that I felt so strongly for equality who reached out, happy to know that I was allied with them. For them to not know that beforehand hurt my heart. It reminded me that I have not done enough, have not spoken loudly enough in the past.
I have not been silenced, nor have I been thought of as less, even though I have my own checkered past, and have made many mistakes, some of which I have still not completely owned up to. I have had anger problems and reacted in fear and irrationality when cornered. I have attacked the people that I love when I did not mean to do so.
With everything that is going on, I have gotten to the part of my life where I need to speak up. I need to raise my voice to the skies, and join in with the voices until the world can hear us collectively say "Enough. This will not continue to stand."
Am I perfect? No. I have not claimed to be. Many of the problems that I have had in my life are me getting in my own way, of not realizing that there were more things in my control during the portions of my life that were difficult than I previously recognized. At 30, I have finally gotten to the point that I am the only person who can control what I say and do, and I can recognize that my responses to things are based on how I was raised, what I have seen, what has been explained to me. Some of my responses have been conditioned on trying to mind my safety over anything else, my protection. As these terrible things keep happening in the government, as the country fights over something as simple as wearing a mask for the protection of its citizenry, as people make excuses time and time again for the police seeking to oppress the free speech of its citizenry, of blaming the victims for the responses, I have realized things that I am not proud of. I have a violent past, and not ONCE has a cop ever considered the need to pull a gun on me. Not once have I been considered a threat. Meanwhile, children of color are taught at a young age to be cautious in all their activities, stunting their childhood from the freedoms that children learn and grow from. When playing pretend is getting children shot, when jogging is getting men shot, when sleeping in their home after a long shift is getting women shot, and so many other scenarios, we cannot in good conscious let this stand. When the leader of our country is calling for harsher punishment, using tear gas to clear an area so he can take a picture, telling people of color to learn from history before they repeat it......I am sickened.
This is unconscionable. This is unbelievable. This is what we were afraid of when this leader was elected. And if he is reelected, I will not be able to stay locked behind my computer, just trying to educate my small portion of the world in whatever way I can. I cannot, in good conscious, stay inside hiding from the injustice. I will fight for the rights of the people I love, even if that means risking my life. As I listened to Hamilton on our country's day of independence, many different songs spoke to me, and while I have said enough in this, I feel the need to share the quotes that have stuck with me:
"I may not live to see our glory, but I will gladly join the fight, and when our children tell our story, they'll tell the story of tonight...Raise a glass to freedom, something they can never take away. No matter what they tell you. Raise a glass to the four of us. Tomorrow there'll be more of us telling the story of tonight."
"Look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now. History is happening... and we just happen to be in the greatest city in the world."
"Oceans rise, empires fall. We have seen each other through it all, and when push comes to shove I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love."
"Thirty two thousand troops in New York Harbor. They surround our troops."
"Dying is easy young man; living is harder."
"Life doesn't discriminate between the sinners and the saints. It takes and it takes and it takes and we keep living anyway. We rise and we fall and we break and we make our mistakes, and if there's a reason I'm still alive when so many have died, then I'm willing to wait for it."
"There's only one way for us to win this: provoke outrage, outright. Don't engage, strike by night. Remain relentless til their troops take flight. Make it impossible to justify the cost of the fight. Outrun, outlast, hit 'em quick, get out fast. Stay alive until this horror show has passed. We're gonna fly a lot of flags half-mast."
"Or you could die, and we need you alive."
"Look at where you are, look at where you started. The fact that you're alive is a miracle. Just stay alive, that would be enough...I don't pretend to know the challenges you're facing, the worlds you keep erasing and creating in your mind."
"And just like that it's over. We tend to our wounded, we count our dead. Black and white soldiers wonder alike if this really means freedom. Not yet."
"How do you write like you're running out of time? Write day and night like you're running out of time? Every day you fight like you're running out of time, running out of time. Are you running out of time? How do you write like tomorrow won't arrive? How do you write like you need it to survive? How do you write every second you're alive?"
"No one really knows how the game is played, the art of the trade, how the sausage gets made. We just assume that it happens but no one else is in the room where it happens."
"When you got skin in the game, you stay in the game, but you don't get a win unless you play in the game. Oh you get love for it, you get hate for it, you get nothing if you wait for it."
"Even now, I lie awake knowing history has its eyes on me....Let me
tell you what I wish I'd known when I was young and dreamed of glory.
You have no control, who lives, who dies, who tells your story. I know
that we can win. I know that greatness lies in you, but remember from
here on in, history has its eyes on you."
