Monday, December 05, 2016

#Imabluedot


Virginia removed To Kill A Mockingbird from its curriculum due to racist content. This is book burning without the match, censorship by omission. To think going without the discussion on racism and sexual assault, is like saying don't discuss the forest fire in Tennessee. The fire rages and leaves a swath of destruction because of our inaction. At least with a fire, there is regrowth. You can't say that about removal of germane issues removed from curriculum. A better metaphor would be an invasive species filling the forest and killing off trees of critical thinking on matters of social justice.

It's not like social injustice is new, and I can be counted among those who previously never considered marching. I'm a Wife and Mother, care giver to aging Father, sister living with me after her permanent disability, and our mere survival from one day to the next is no longer enough.

Every time I think I can't be more flabbergasted or filled with any more outrage, I mean let's face it, social injustice isn't new...more $/:; hits the fan. The policeman getting off for the Charlotte shooting and a President Elect silent on that but on twitter raging SNL and setting foreign policy in 140 character whims. Bannon on staff?! General Petraeus who literally lived season 1 plot line of House of Cards and narrowly missed being called back to active duty just so he could be court martialed and sent to Leavenworth, needing his Parole Officer's permission to travel, considered as Secretary of State candidate? My worst immediate fear when he won was the decades a Scalia 2.0 would have on the autonomy of women and for my girls' generation (they are just six and seven)? That was days ago, at the time I share this, and I think now I was being naive.

So, in January, I will march. I will participate in the Women's March on Washington DC; with each step, may we encourage the discouraged, and effect change from every local elected office, place of business, and community's culture that our best form of caring for ourselves and one another is through our democracy. It's who we are. #whyimarch #imabluedot

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