After leaving the waters of Puerto Plata to arrive in New York, I watched how another human being, Alton Sterling, laid on the ground, moving his arm tragically, chest opened with bullets...for selling CD's. This is today; now. And the coldness of the police had nothing to say but "shots fired" as he breathed his last. I remembered Eric Garner placed in a banned choke-hold...for selling loose cigarettes. And the coldness of the police, the EMT's, and the justice department had nothing to offer him and his family, the human family but the steel of more guns.
After watching the trauma last night, I went to sleep to the warmth of my life-giving partner, embracing her beautiful skin and its blackness, asking: Is this white response a coldness, or emptiness of spirit: A society structured around fear, criminalization of black bodies, more guns, and a "law and order" that preserves white lives and property. Emptiness. This is emptiness. Because what is evil but the lack of love that can bind us towards moral responsibility, reparations, healing and wholeness.
We are not there, we do not want healing and wholeness, we want more "power" and "things," because we (and hear I speak of white people) have not even collectively admitted the danger of our disease. We may choose to deny it, but if we "love thy neighbor as ourselves," we are still in a hell where the painful shrieks of Sterling's son and mother rise-up. This "law and order" that preserves white privilege and property has an ugly underbelly. And this ugliness will rise up and swallow up everything if we do not ADMIT this and ACT.