Summer Park County Fair Moon
Imagine if you were African-American looking back at American history. First, enslavement and its horrors. Then, the Civil War. At last, free at last. But wait. Reconstruction torpedoed by Andrew Johnson, Jim Crow laws speed through the country, returning and enforcing segregation. Lynching and the Klan. The rise of the Klan in the 1920’s, then the Great Depression, falling, as these catastrophes do, harder on the poor, many African-American. The wars, in which African-American soldiers could die, but not lead. A shining moment, the time of Martin Luther King. Selma. Washington. Birmingham. The Civil Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act. Affirmative Action. Their gutting over the last few years. The steady pop, pop, pop of police shootings. Death and maiming.
How would you view our common culture? Would you feel safe? As I went about my Friday, whenever I saw an African-American in downtown Denver, I wondered what they were feeling in the aftermath of Falcon Heights, Minnesota and Dallas. There was a young African-American girl lying in a chalk outline of a human body, a protester in Minnesota. Her sign said, Will I be next? How do we unravel this knotted skein in the tapestry of our nation’s history?
Fixing climate change, a very difficult challenge, only makes sense if the world we save is one we all want for our home. If you want peace, work for justice. True that.
