Fighting quarantine fatigue with yet another newsletter. I love all of your emails, links and memes –you can find them in my
past newsletters
. I’m also thrilled to hear that people are forwarding this along – if you’re new, join my
mailing list
. And, as always, thanks for protecting yourself and others by staying home when you can, washing your hands slightly obsessively, and masking up!
If your email inbox is anything like mine, it is overflowing with deep sadness. The voices of peaceful protesters across the country are, at times, drowned out by looting, anger, and fear. But chants against systemic racism grow louder each day, bringing with them voices from all backgrounds. This chorus is a beautiful thing, long overdue.
My biggest worry at the moment is what will happen three or four weeks from now. The very people marching respectfully through neighborhoods and kneeling side by side to show that they won’t stand for abuse, tyranny, and suffocation at the hands of others will, to some degree, become infected with a virus whose hallmark move is to send people to the emergency room with the complaint: I can’t breathe. The coming irony is as unfathomable as it is ironic.
Today’s newsletter is very short by design. I have included only three links, all worthy of your time for different reasons. But my hope is that you spend your hours elsewhere today – reading, self-educating, supporting fellow Americans who don’t have the privileges or resources you might have. All of our collective voices need to be heard for the foreseeable future, until there is transformative change. Our actions must follow because it is always more powerful to do than to say. So, if your time will be spent protesting, I encourage you to try to practice distancing as much as possible and keep your mask on while you are out. Otherwise, coronavirus will silence some number of voices, blunting action because it’s hard to protest when you are fighting for your life in an ICU bed. We need your bodies, your minds, and your souls to remain part of this movement until it is won, and that requires staying healthy.
No meme today. But there’s this. Of everything I have read and seen over the past week, this is among the most moving.
Dear America
, by high school junior TJ Muhammed.