Hard Days
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Thank you, my friends, for supporting Black Lives Matter. Every day, there are new reports of police brutality coming from the US, while citizens around the world watch appalled, enraged, then marching their fury and demanding substantive change. How hard it is for Black mothers, fathers, children. How terrifying to have to educate your children about the dangers they face, yet let them leave your side.
In Canada, where I live, similar murders or beatings often occur, as well–our police forces are increasingly militarized, just like in the US, and their attacks are often against the racialized, poor and disabled (particularly Indigenous peoples). Lately there have been a series of attacks during so-called “wellness checks,” sometimes when police weren’t even requested but paramedics were. Imagine needing a hug and medical care and instead being degraded, dragged, beaten, murdered.
We’re watching you, police, and we are not happy with what we see.
Do I need to state that these atrocities just don’t happen proportionally to cis, het, white, non-disabled people? No, I don’t. The facts are inescapable, inarguable, the need for overhaul acute.
COVID-19 surges. I’m lucky to live in an area that’s had few cases, but we understand, here, that re-opening poses a significant threat. I wish good fortune to everyone, and extend a hope that the vile and inhumane triage protocols that target older, more ill and disabled people with sidelining will never be enacted where you live. (Please, please, let’s not add the inhumanity and Nazi-legacy of eugenics to this mess.)
Of course, this is a writing blog, but for me writing, now, seems unimportant and beside the point. If you’re able to lift your pen during these crises, I wish you courage and strength.
Eaton Hamilton 