So, it’s been a quiet weekend for news, no crazy news–

Protests over death of George Floyd, police killings spread to London, Berlin, Toronto

 

Oh, uh.  Well, okay, some crazy shit might have gone down this weekend….

Images of police using violence against peaceful protesters are going viral

Okay, a lot of crazy shit went down, and might still be this week.

Leaders plead for an end to violence as cities brace for sixth night of protests

….you know, I had a talk with my mom about this.  To her, these protests make no sense; why can’t they just try talking about their problems with the authorities, peacefully protesting, and only escalate if that doesn’t work?  Because clearly, they’ve never tried that before.  It’s always a weird thing to discuss with my parents, as mom is a WOC, and dad is white and was born poor in a huge family in Milwaukee, both of them came of age during the 60’s, and yet, they both look at these things differently at times.  Mom especially seems to have this strange bubble view of race, where the wronged just don’t seem to work hard enough to make things right, not that the people with power have been doing their best to make sure things never change, and it’s a struggle to force that change.  (She also used to tell me, when I was a kid, that I didn’t have a lot of friends because I didn’t work hard enough to smile and be friendly to everyone.  You see a pattern.)  Dad teeters back and forth between agreeing that this is inevitable and will happen when people have been mistreated, and agreeing with mom that they’re just making it worse by fighting the system.  I find it so weird.  Dad still ends up having more empathy with POC than my mom does, and I think sometimes I should have written one of my papers for my Bachelors on how assumptions that POC will somehow be less racist or more tolerant of others can be a very misguided idea.  It would have been an interesting comparison and contrast between the two of them and their families.

Stay safe, everyone.

How to Support the Struggle Against Police Brutality