How I am Choosing to Respond to this Time in History: Take FourDisclaimer: I feel it is necessary to add an introduction to this blog to let you know that even though it may not seem timely now, I wrote this on August 15, 2020, and just returned to the draft today for some reason, which may be more apropos than I originally realized as today is the first day of Black History Month. And now I am adding another disclaimer to my disclaimer above - my hope is that we use this time to propagate the extension of Black History Month to much, much longer, and for the time being take a continued AND/OR renewed interest in the history that affects us all and is really more aptly named world history. #love #weareallinthistogether Only when I started watching all of the social justice documentaries did I start to understand that as much as I would prefer to see separation of church and state, of certain leaders being championed by good organizations, and of politics staying out of all of the conversations listed above, politics has been entertwined in all of these all along. Since we have a group that is aligned with the motto of protecting and serving, it may be a little harsh to hear that this same organization was created to catch one group of individuals, allegedly to the end of protecting another group, when the truth of the matter really is that it was established to squeeze as much blood, sweat, and tears out of one group to the benefit of the other group. When we realize that our protect and serve group was initially tasked in taking away human rights from the men, women, and children of one group, to the point of taking away their lives in the name of benefiting, a.k.a. prospering the wealthy foundation of the second group, we begin to realize that justice was only available for one of the two groups. But how was this justified? It was justified by calling the second group mentioned above names, by assigning labels to them to absolve the first group from guilt and shame by literally taking their lives and saying it is freedom, saying it is safety, saying it is self righteous to choose who lives and who dies. Now, what were the crimes that were being committed? As a person with a certain color of skin, if you happened to be caught on the street at a moment in time that you did not have a job, you were arrested based on a crime called vagrancy, or even if you were gainfully employed and happened to be found guilty by one group of people of seemingly innocent but named crimes including mischief, insulting gestures, and staying in the same place for too long. And why would one group want to act in a certain way, such as this, toward another group? Because once laws against slavery were enacted, the first group mentioned was losing profits they were used to gaining by the labor of another group, and they were looking for a way to gain back said profit. So they found a loophole, a.k.a. if you could arrest someone by being on the street next to you and looking at you in a way that you did not approve of, you could then subject that person that you just had arrested to labor for free, a.k.a. slave labor, and do it all in the name of justice. This begs the question, who is justice for, how is it gained, and how is it maintained? Now that we have established that all justice has roots in politics from the beginning of the ages, we can see how the words justice for all really was intended to mean justice for some. And after these unconstitutional laws were disbanded, what means did the first mentioned group employ to continuously hold onto a control that flowed wealth to them and not to others? Another legal system, of course, and this time the one that impacted which laws were enacted and which laws were disbanded; or in the words, the vote. By historically only allowing certain individuals to vote, certain genders to vote, and certain individuals of any gender to be considered only a fraction of a human being (3/5 to be exact), the hand of justice was allowed to continuously enact unjust laws that continued to benefit some and disenfranchise others. And what finally happened after everyone was allowed to vote and laws were enacted to make the words "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" closer to true for all instead of an elite few? Beyond disenfranchising those individuals who did not have the resources to take time off of work to make it to the polls and/or the transportation to make it to locations that were strategically placed to allow a certain group to vote while another did not have access to do so, and creating citizenship tests that subjectively prohibited certain individuals to vote, the protect and serve group conveniently turned their heads when violence was perpetrated against those who had the courage to walk, run, or crawl to the polling stations to seek the ability to let freedom ring. As mentioned in Our Time is Now by Stacy Abrams, systematic oppression and racial injustice go hand in hand with our voting and political systems as much as the history of enslavement over a certain group of individuals to exert power over them, and the coverup that has allowed so many, if not all, of us to avoid gaining knowledge of a history that involves us all.
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AuthorValerie Ellis, who is in alignment with the Black Lives Matter Movement and everyone whose life is impacted, now or before, by times of social injustice. Archives
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