Editor’s note: This commentary is by Teddy Waszazak, who is a city councilor in Barre and a member of the board for Rights & Democracy.
As I have privilege and platform, I think it is important that we, as Americans and Vermonters, have some serious conversations about race – and state unequivocally that black lives matter.
As we see uprisings in America’s largest cities — and protests even in some of our small Vermont towns — it seems the nation is finally ready to address the issues of the militarization of our police forces, police brutality, systemic racism, and the disregard for the lives of people of color. When George Floyd was murdered, my thoughts were that we had learned nothing since Michael Brown and Ferguson. Then I thought to Trayvon Martin and Rodney King. And then to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. To Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, and Philando Castile. Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Phyllis Wheatley.
It is a time long overdue that we have a conversation about who the systems of our American society were built for. Who it was built by. When it was built, and who was at the table. What trades were made, and whose pleas were ignored. Whose neighborhoods were destroyed by interstates or fossil fuel plants. Whose schools were defunded and whose housing left to become dilapidated.
People of color, and especially black Americans, have been oppressed for hundreds of years. From our nation’s original sin of slavery and native genocide, to Jim Crow laws, to a broken reconstruction and systemic segregation: Who are we to tell them, that after 400 years of white domination of a continent, that they cannot be angry? Who are we to tell them where the line is, when they lay their lives on the line every day, in America?
I believe that these are some questions that we should be thinking about:
· Why are people angrier about the destruction of private property than they are about the murder of a black man?
· Why are people angrier about an uprising than the conditions that led to that uprising?
· Why do people claim that “all lives matter,” while denying that black lives matter?
· Why do people blame unarmed protesters, when there is video evidence of police running protestors down with a police car, shooting rubber bullets, and using tear gas on a 9-year-old girl?
· Why do people continue to insist that protesters are instigators, when a member of Congress was sprayed with mace in Columbus, Ohio, and the same of a state senator in New York?
· Why do people believe the media exaggerates the situation, when at least two journalists have been arrested, four shot at, and one blinded?
· Why do people insist this is not an issue of race, when white folks with semi-automatic weapons stormed the statehouses of Minnesota and Michigan, without being shot at, tear gassed, arrested, or shoved?
· Why do folks insist that this isn’t a Vermont issue, when black folks make up 1% of Vermont’s population, but 11% of our prison population?
· Why is it that we only find out who the “bad cops” are when it is too late? And what can we do to support those who enter the force to protect and serve, and make our communities better and safer?
We all have to do better. America has to do better. Vermont has to do better. So, donate to black organizations, and invest in communities of color. Support candidates of color and lift up the voices of people of color. Read some literature and watch some films that were created by people who don’t look like you. Listen to the pain, and the joys, and to the real experiences.
Our fellow American’s lives depend on it.
