There is much good news today:
- Only 11 more days of the Trump reign, or less if he is removed under the 25th Amendment (which might prevent him from running for office again) or impeached for a second time.
- The win of two Senate seats in Georgia.
- Many former Trump supporters speaking out against his treason and promotion of insurrection.
So much has happened in the last couple of days here in DC that will affect my book, AWAKE to Racism: Listening, Connecting, Acting. I need to update the Introduction and add more to the Conclusion since the “Last Stand of White Supremacy” at the US Capitol on Wednesday.
Michelle Norris expressed some of my reflections so well in an editorial in The Washington Post today:
“The common refrain is a fear of an America where white privilege is challenged and whiteness as the gold standard of beauty or power or value or provenance is no longer the automatic default…
if that mob had been Black, participants would have been called savages, thugs, hoodlums, and eventually inmates. There would have been no fist-pumping parade out the door. Looting would not have gone unpunished. The day would have concluded with handcuffs and mass detention. We would likely have seen tanks in the streets. We would almost certainly have seen more bloodshed.”
Other articles detailed the long advance public notice that this ‘rally’ was planned, advertised as violent, that participants were encouraged to bring weapons. That it was stimulated and urged by a sitting president is appalling but not surprising. At least four people died. The Pentagon, with the power to call up or detain the DC National Guard, refused to do so when begged by Congresspeople and the Mayor of DC.
This event was a display of white supremacy in the very bones of our most basic institutions. Not a ‘fringe group’ of ‘good ole boys.’ A structure that must be dismantled, so true equality, justice and hope can flourish. Now.
Still “breathing in/breathing out” in Washington, DC, six miles from the Capitol.
The Power of Love2 