This time. Maybe.

At the end of this post you’ll find links to the other blogs featuring this challenge. Check them all out, see what words they got and how they used them.

I’m using: balance, cerebellum, gentle, overhear, surround

They were submitted by: https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

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I feel like I'm on autopilot lately. Cerebellums be getting us through, right?

As I'm writing this, protests against racism and police brutality and how those two intersect to cost Black lives have been going on for 47 days. I've watched live streams from independent journalists for most of those days keeping up with marches and protests across the country in as many cities as I can and occupations in new york city, buffalo, the North Carolina governor's mansion, Aurora, d.c., Atlanta, Nashville, Louisville, Seattle, and more.

I have seen American citizens be brutalized for nonexistent or arbitrary rules, shot point blank with less than lethal rounds, choked, hit, gassed, maced, pepper balled... I've seen protesters shot at by racists and people mad about being inconvenienced. I've seen them hit by cars while I've been on their streams and unfortunately I saw someone shot and killed. Every time I open a live stream these days I brace myself for seeing someone get hurt or even die...and that's from the relative comfort of my home. I can't imagine how bad it is for people on the ground, the ones streaming every night to get the truth out who have been targeted by police in multiple cities across the country despite their press passes (because of their press passes) or for the ones marching for justice and reform every day they're able.

I've also seen protesters give each other gentle education, make demands, surround one another with love, and succumb to the stress and cause problems. It has not been a faultless movement and fear and defensiveness has cost lives, but the good, the empowerment, the organization has been more than a balance to the ugly. That good, that love and it's search for justice and equality has exponentially outweighed the bad.

It feels different this time.

I remember (vaguely) the LA riots/protests. Protests about our involvement in Iraq. I remember the occupy protests in 2011/12. I remember the protests after Michael Brown and Freddie Gray. There were protests after Trump won and again in 2018. For many of the years of my life there have been protests to address our attack on other nations, our attack on Black and Brown people here and abroad, and for an end to the kind of unfettered capitalism that costs so many lives especially Black, Brown, and queer ones. Yet here we are...

But this time...maybe?

Earlier this year people protested for the right to get sick and die and also get others sick, for haircuts, for using servants for conveniences...and the general public looked on in horror at what we were willing to do to one another. Coughing and spitting and screaming spittle on folks during a pandemic for the right to go to a bar. The divide seemed impossibly wide.

And then George Floyd was murdered by police in broad daylight by an improper chokehold by a police force representative of every department across the country with a long history of lynchings, rounding up slaves, busting unions, belonging to the KKK, committing assaults, running drugs, having theft and prostitution rackets with the locals and more.

People of color are tired. Tired of dying over nothing more than the color of their skin, when they're asleep in their own homes, doing what they're told, or acting out. Doesn't matter. Tired of building up their own communities just to have them destroyed and then told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Tired of existing in a society this unfair just to be told they're playing a "race" card.

If you use that phrase, eat my entire ass.

People are tired of a system that allows people to sit back and profit off their work, that makes it impossible to escape poverty, that puts people in huge amounts of debt to get an education they'll never stop paying for during their lifetimes. People are tired of being overworked and underpaid and having to choose between food and water or not even having access to clean water. People are tired of men like Jeff Bezos whose taxes if appropriate could, alone, pay for so many social programs, for needed infrastructure, for mass transport, climate change programs, and more. Seriously...and more. And he would still have more money to burn than most people will ever see in their lifetimes. We're tired of being in the caboose begging for scraps and fighting for a step up while people with inherited wealth and endless opportunities have golden toilets and rows of shark teeth ready to snap the smallest chunk of change.

We're tired.

And angry.

And this time, it's different.

If you listen closely, you can overhear it whispered from our lips in the shadows of the night and the bright of day. Every moment.

This time.

Maybe.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2020/07/end-of-lineage-use-your-words.html

Wandering Web Designer https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/2020/07/sallyball.html

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Crazy Mama Llama https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2020/07/use-your-words-sunshine-at-mall.html