If you want to avail yourself of the internet opportunities to join a sangha online, please see this
post.
PDF of Towards the "Other America": Anti-Racist Resources for White People Taking Action for Black Lives Matter.
Kindness in the National Gallery (of England)
video (10 minutes).
I found a sutta about a mother and son who while monks, engaged in, well, you can
read it. A Buddhist Oedipal.
Political Rant:
"Black lives matter" doesn't mean only black lives matter. Surely video footage of recent days, gathering and gathering from all the other footage of injustices, indicates that there are problems that could be address. For a man to be shot for running in a white neighborhood is shocking. The fellow who shot him was taken off active duty because he refused to take a training on the appropriate use of force. He did not want to know that.
The disturbing footage of the elderly man who was pushed, lost balance and lay bleeding, as police stepped over him to hassle peaceful protesters is disturbing to me. I have cop friends and I'd like to think they were incapable of such action. The whole emergency force the cop belonged to resigned in solidarity with their brother.
I believe tribalism is what wrecks a larger universal ethics. When you belong to a tribe, there is only good for tribe and bad for tribe. In a universal ethics, regardless of tribe, it is wrong to push an elderly person, no matter how belligerent or peaceful.
I have a friend who is the wife of an officer and doesn't want to hear any negativity about police. Every day she worries if her husband will come home. It's a dangerous job.
I think there enough space to both care for the cops and their families, and for the people who we see on videos being killed when they seem to pose no threat.
That murdering cops get off, is not in doubt. That we have videos that make us question that, is new. This has always been going on. We are just seeing it now.
The cop who murdered George Floyd has been fired, is getting a divorce, and is on suicide watch. I have no doubt that he is suffering. Many people are pointing at other injustices and saying, "can we get attention for this too?"
The idea of defunding police is appealing to me. The quote from Admiral Adama on Battlestar Galactica is important. Police and military need to be separate.
The idea that racist went into the police force because of Obama, blames Obama, again, for the realizations we come to as a result of his presidency.
The conservative narrative that I had nothing to do with that incident, and I'm not a racist, so I won't have white guilt--I reject the idea that we aren't all connected. Racism hurts me as a white. Do the same things happen to white people? Yes, they have been murdered by police as well. But I have seen statistics that lie, and say they are equally prevalent. To deny that racism doesn't exist is racism.
The need to erase the racism in America narrative because of white fragility is scary. Racism exists. It's deep roots are just being seen with the new technology. To deny racism is a weird reality avoiding strategy.
I have benefitted from racism, and I don't want to. I want a fair just egalitarian merit based society. I believe that is what America stands for. I am not excluded from patriotism to point out flaws in our current society because I want a better America.
Look at the world. The whole world is risking infection of Covid-19 to protest this issue. The whole world wants us to figure this out, because despite our less than respectable president, we are a beacon in the world. If America can't do this what hope do they have? Well, they could do it too, but that's not the point. Like it or not, the world sees us as leaders. Lets live up to more elevated expectations, please.
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