I was going to try and write something inspiring for the new year. An entry about hope and resilience, a testament to the human experience and how we can get through most things with positive thinking and each other. I was going to write a roundup of all the funny and strange things that happened this year that provided some levity and distraction from our failing systems. A few of those weird occurrences, like the shrimp guy or the saga of the gorilla glue lady.

So much has gone on last year that has made an impact on how we view the world and the responsibility of the governments around us. I was going to write about how leaders continuously make decisions that are clearly not putting people before profits. Instead lives are being put directly in danger to ensure the economy doesn’t get “shut down.” I was going to write about how the influx of unionizing, workers strikes, and walkouts is a direct reaction to how capitalistic structures are dehumanizing and debilitating to the livelihoods of millions.

I decided not to, though. So much has gone on this year that rehashing felt like more of a redundancy than a recap. Also because time feels like an illusion anyway. Plus I just saw Betty White passed and that news just threw me completely off.

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It’s almost Christmas and like evil clockwork, Covid has decided to raise its voice with a vengeance in the form of Omarion Omicron. There is a lot about the emergence of this new variant that is both frustrating and exhausting but also infuriating and troubling. It’s infuriating and troubling because of the US’s reaction to South Africa after they so graciously shared their scientific findings. The US acted as if SA manufactured the variant themselves, held the only instance of the mutation, and were planning to unleash it on the world. Subsequently, the US enacted travel restrictions for many countries on the African continent, including: South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini, Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. As outlined in this opinion piece, the decision felt incredibly discriminatory and counter-productive considering how many people travel internationally and the very high likelihood the variant was already abroad (surprise it was).

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I’ve had this blog for a long time. When I revisit old posts I’m taken back to the point in time I felt inclined to get those feelings out. There’s one post I remembered writing recently that just felt really poignant to dig up and link to today. It’s a post I wrote five six years ago on Thanksgiving 2015. I wrote about being thankful for being black. I was working at Squarespace and it was the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement. Protests erupted around the country because George Zimmerman faced no consequences for his deadly actions and this movement amplified these devastating conversations about race in America. It feels like it was so long ago but also yesterday that I was in the streets yelling, Hands Up! Don’t Shoot! Probably because I echoed those same chants earlier this year in NYC. This time to defund the police.

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We all braced ourselves for that inevitable verdict, but it didn’t make it any less frustrating. I literally let out a scream when I heard the accounts being read off and the jury’s decision of not guilty nonchalantly after each account. I watched in disgust as that little monster crumbled with relief that his actions would indeed not have any consequences.

He shot three people and killed two at a Black Lives Matter protest and nothing happened to him through the judicial system, setting an incredible scary precedent for the acceptable behavior that can now be cited in court from now on. He brought his gun across state lines and killed people. Beyond this being a slap in the face to justice, it must be devastating to the victims’ families that their loved ones died and a jury didn’t feel that Kyle should have been held responsible for them no longer being here.

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The pitfalls of this justice system have been nothing if not consistent when it comes to the ways in which it’s unevenly applied to black and brown people versus white people. Countless studies have been made outlining sentencing discrepancies for the same crimes amongst white people and people of color. The most recent egregious handling of the law is of course the case of Kyle Rittenhouse who became an infamous figure during the protests against police brutality. In the wake of the video depicting the death of an unarmed man at the literal hands of a police officer that shook the nation to its core, this kid decided to grab his gun and crossed state lines to “defend property” and be “a medic.” His unnecessary presence at a protest resulted in him KILLING TWO men and wounding a third.

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