The People Are Speaking

Theme song: Mississippi Goddam

This post is dedicated to Eric Garner.

Friends, you don't need me to tell you we have a national crisis on our hands. What you may not realize is that this crisis is the result of hundreds of years of pent-up grief, terror, and anger.

Our country was built by courageous men who often, but not always, practiced terrorism and murder to amass wealth and power on a scale never before seen. These elements are at still at play.

How many black men will be illegally choked to death before we wake up to the requirement for justice and equality in our country?

How many wrongs will go unrighted before we take responsibility for our violent society and begin to actively heal it?

People will criticize me, I know, but I stand for the protesters who are blocking roads and breaking windows.

It takes courage to say "no," and most -- like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Ché, Sophie Scholl, and countless other heroes and heroines -- end up dead as a result of the stand they take for humanity.

My hope is that Eric Garner will be a martyr and stand for everything he will no longer be able to say, namely that we as a society and a global community must find ways -- NOW -- to right the wrongs we can ALL see EVERYWHERE.

Eric wasn't taking a stand for humanity. Like so many of us, he was simply trying to make it through the day.

Yet, in his name, many are taking a stand. Some are in the streets, while others, like me, are simply throwing their drops in the bucket from the comfort of a couch in a well-heated room.

If for whatever reason you don't have the resources to be a protester and can't think what to else to do, throw your drop in the bucket with mine. Start a conversation. Send an email. Comment on Facebook.

Stand up and say, "No."

Do it for me, you, Eric, his family, and everyone we know.

{Photo credit: Gawker/link to post about unarmed black citizens killed by police.}