Abandoned by Booklikes
Government drone by day and book lover and geek girl by night!
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#BlackOutTuesday: The Day After
If you have the time and emotional bandwidth, consider what you can do in your community to change things for the better.
I sat in on a virtual town-hall last night for Alexandria, VA and was heartened that we had over 1,000 people trying to participate in the Zoom call (it can only handle that many) and the Facebook live video had thousands of people watching. Our Chief of Police and other police officers spoke. The Chief of Police flat out acknowledged that George Floyd was murdered by four police officers and all four should have been arrested and charged with murder. He said this action will set back communities for decades. He wants to do what is right for our city and wants to make things better for his own officers who are also upset about what they witnessed.
I loved that one of the officers went through the history of police forces in the US (started off as slave catchers) to turn to a paramilitary force that is not about the community. He wants it be about what they can do to serve the community and have more opportunities to keep younger officers on the force who have gone to college and have degrees in psychology and history instead of those coming in who are prior military.
The community I thought was great and had so many powerful speakers. Heck, we heard from Alexandria's Race and Social Equity Officer. I had no idea we even had one. The community also discussed retraining, conflict resolution training, deescalating training and even officers taking cultural anthropology classes.
I think our country is at a crossroads and it's going to be ugly and painful, but we have to do this if we really do want to be that light shining on the hill that we say we are to others.
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