Friends, tell me what happens to you when you hear the news that a healthy, vital black man named Ahmaud Arbery was shot to death doing nothing but jogging in his own neighborhood by two white men with guns in a truck. Do you scroll faster, close your eyes, unfollow, shake your head, think not here, not me, not now, not this, not us?
Do you think: this isn’t who I am, this isn’t who we are? Do you think: how did we get here? Do you think: how can we keep going when our human family has such a primal wound it cannot yet keep itself alive? Do you think: how can we heal, what reparations can be made, how can we speak to one another after such violence, such atrocities, such unending weight of fear burdened upon Black and Indigenous People of Color again, and again, and again, and again. Do you think: I want to understand this radically f*cked system, I want to know how we did this to ourselves with our hunger for power, control, our invention of whiteness, our rabid need for separation and better than and race? Do you think: it is up to me? Do you?
Because I do. I believe it is up to me. I believe the (un)learning I do and do not do, the conversations I have and do not have, my willingness to participate in or reject systems of oppression that make it possible for two white men to hunt down a black man jogging in his own neighborhood—I believe it matters. I believe I do not have a choice but to care, if I say I want a different world, a different president, a different equity.
We cannot fight unilateral battles. We cannot fight for ourselves and not each other. If I fight for Ahmaud Arbery, I fight for his family, for every man, womxn, and child I love who is in danger when they step outside their home. And it starts simply: Do you really care? Then do something.
White friends, please call Governor Kemp at (404)656-1776 and the Georgia FBI to demand a thorough investigation (details below). Then, I recommend ordering (and operative word: *doing*) Layla F. Saad’s bestselling Me & White Supremacy workbook, reading Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, and listening to the Duke Center for Documentary Studies podcast series “Seeing White”. Go. Do.
Via Glennon Doyle, clarification on action items:
First, Contact Gov. Kemp’s office (404) 656-1776 with 3 demands:
1) Justice for Ahmaud, including the immediate trial of the arrested gunmen and any accomplices (those in the 2nd truck pursuing Ahmaud).
2) The GBI take full control of the case from local authorities, with an exhaustive investigation and appropriate charges.
3) The launch of an investigation into police and prosecutorial misconduct within the Glynn County police dept & the Waycross District Attorney’s Office.
Second, Call the Georgia field office of the FBI and demand they investigate related police and prosecutorial misconduct within the Glynn County police dept & the Waycross District Attorney’s Office: (770) 216-3000.
