Portland has been under curfew for the last few nights. George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis when a police officer restrained him and kneeled on his neck for over eight minutes. The reverberations have echoed nationwide.
I have a lot of thoughts and a lot of feelings. I went into the office yesterday to start a new role with COVID response and a restaurant a block away had every window broken. We were asked to leave the government building after lunch for our own safety. But these things are not what I want to focus on, because they are inconveniences, not life or death matters.
I am, in this order, Mexican, American Revolution white, and Cuban by ancestry. I don't feel that I get to say what the protests across our nation mean, what it means to be Black in America, what it means to face policy brutality. I do not want to burden my friends and acquaintances with educating me, so I have been mostly quiet. Silence furthers oppression, so I want to say that I am listening, learning, and working towards how I can best be an ally. I do not want to use my voice if there are others I can prioritize, but I don't yet know enough to feel confident about how and who that is. I'm working on it. I'm working on myself.
Also: COVID -19 is still here. I worry for folks. I know that jails are hot spots of the virus already and large crowds pose a risk. How do we care for ourselves while uniting as a community? How do we keep people out of hospitals? I don't have answers, only questions.
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