Which Lives Matter
I started this website/blog to share my families journey building our hundred year old farmhouse and land into a fully functioning farmstead. Maybe my words won’t matter, but I have to speak up. This is my platform and with it my voice. I am not blind to the world around me, I see the riots and the looting, I see the peaceful protesting, I see the scared, I see the enraged. With watching and observing, I see it all. My entire career revolves around observing and trying to notice micro changes before they become something more critical. To solve and correct problems before they become life or death situations. So watching, observing, and waiting is what I know best.
I have so many mixed emotions, and I’m sure that I am not alone in that statement. In a way I have been watching this unfold my whole life. Things I have seen when younger is starting to make more sense. I have seen definitions of things I feel finally put into words. Now that I have watched and waited enough I think I can articulate what I am going through.
All Lives Matter
I both love and hate this statement. Do all lives matter? Of course they do, you would have to be a barbarian to disagree. Not all lives are being discriminated against, the lives of the oppressed need more recognition than the lives of the privileged. #BLACKLIVESMATTER I stand with you. The fact that it is 2020 and there is still discrimination and racism is infuriating.
This isn’t really a subject or topic I know how to talk about. With the way I was raised it feels uncomfortable to even have a voice regarding this. I don’t want to raise my children the same way I was raised. Sweeping these feelings under the rug and just quietly keeping to myself is what feels natural. However I am an advocate and an ally and being such means I need to speak up.
What about Blue Lives?
I see the phrase blue lives matter and I both agree and disagree. Blue lives matter because all lives matter, but blue lives are not lives. Blue is a career, blue is a choice. Being a person of color is not a choice. I grew up hearing that respect is earned. If the police want respect it takes more than going through the police academy to earn it. I have never been arrested but I have had many interactions with police, a very small percentage have left me with a feeling of respect towards police. What I mostly feel is frustration, irritation, and fear. I feel neither protected nor served by the police. Between my own experiences and those I see in the news, I feel that mostly the police protect and serve themselves.
Police are perpetrators too. Why wasn’t that officer publicly arrested on the spot. George Floyd was murdered, in broad day light, in front of the police and nothing was done. Police only protect and serve themselves. I read that the arrest occurred over suspicion of forgery. That crime did not deserve that level of force. Why can a white mass murderer or school shooter be walked out by the police and an unarmed non violent black man can die in the streets? Why is that acceptable? It’s not!
Ethics Matter
In the news I’ve seen physicians killing themselves over the decisions they have had with choosing who lives and dies due to corona virus treatment. The ethical dilemmas that have been grappled with by these doctors to make those tough decisions. When a police officer can take a life so casually and carelessly is inexcusable and unforgivable. That other police, who are people of authority, can stand by with not even a single flinch of intervention in there body while they see this occurring before there eyes.
