"On George Floyd and Black Lives Matter..."

Words have eluded me this past week. Mostly because I'm tired of words. For four centuries, this country has intoned glorious rhetoric on freedom and equality and consistently betrayed those values in its treatment of Black Americans. For decades, institutions have said the right things in response to incidents of policy brutality while doing nothing to prevent them from happening again. This week, the President, as the leader of the party with the most eloquent words about freedom from federal tyranny ordered the military to violently attack Americans peacefully assembling.

Every Minneapolis police officer swears an oath to "to serve mankind; to safeguard lives and property...the weak against oppression or intimidation..to respect the Constitutional rights of all to liberty, equality and justice." What did those words mean to the officers as they suffocated George Floyd? What do our words of outrage mean to the loved ones of George Floyd, Ahmaud Aurbery, Breona Taylor and the countless others who have been murdered in modern-day lynchings?

Words can be the precursor to action. But our past words have clearly fallen lethally short.
Our social media posts, university letters, and corporate statements will also fall short. UNLESS we commit to translating agony to action. UNLESS we move beyond generic rhetoric about systemic change and start identifying and implementing the specific policies that will culminate into systemic reform.

I'm heartened to see that American of all backgrounds have mobilized and am horrified that it has taken this long. I'm encouraged to see White folks acknowledging their privilege and asserting their willingness to change.

But what does change look like? Today and for the foreseeable future, I am committing to figuring what concrete actions are needed in the communities I call home and how I can leverage my skills and positions to make them happen.

The answer to this question will vary from person to person, community to community. I hope you take this time to figure out your answers, to identify what you are committed to doing. What policies can you advocate for? What candidates can you organize for? What spaces can you carve for collective introspection and action with co-workers, with friends, with family?
To start with, here are some resources from the Obama Foundation that can serve as a springboard for reflection and commitment to action.

Our nation's ideals are just words on a paper until we the people will them into reality — with our votes, our voices, and our pocketbooks.

As President Obama noted, "if we want to bring about real change, then the choice isn’t between protest and politics. We have to do both. We have to mobilize to raise awareness, and we have to organize and cast our ballots to make sure that we elect candidates who will act on reform."