Yesterday I posted a letter to friends on my personal Facebook page to help process my thoughts and feelings on what happened in Central Park with birder Christian Cooper and Amy Cooper and what happened to George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, as well as other recent events.

Secondly, thank you to everyone who took a moment to read, respond and/or comment on my post yesterday about the woman in Central Park who called the police to falsely report that an African American man was threatening her life.

Many of you know I have a site called Good Black News where for the last 10 years, I have been posting positive stories about Black people or about those who are doing positive things for Black people.

I usually bear this well for a few reasons: 1)I believe witnessing injustices, other human beings’ pain, struggles and conflicts and reading different perspectives on them is a helpful step to healing for everyone even when you don’t know yet what the step after that is 2)I’ve observed over time that within a few days or weeks, stories can swing from negative to positive, giving real-time affirmation to MLK’s “the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice” quote 3) it’s worth the psychic toll it can take because knowledge is power and finding the good stuff is worth it.

I tried – I pulled out a pen and paper and tried to find clearer words to express what I was trying to say with the Central Park post re: advocating for policy/law change to help defang one specific part of systemic racism – the ability to lie to the police, attempt to use them as personal assassins and get away with it – but what I ended up writing down instead was a list of stories I’ve read recently that had been getting to me but I had not consciously acknowledged their deleterious affect:

Disproportionate numbers of Black and Brown people dying from COVID-19

Children being deported from the border back to countries of origin WITH NO parent/guardian notified and no provisions put in place for their safety

A doctor friend’s post with the long list of names of doctors and healthcare providers who had lost their lives while combatting the COVID-19 crisis

The morning’s post on GBN about three Black men in Cleveland wrongly imprisoned for decades finally receiving $18 million from the city

After all that came out of me, I gave up trying to write out what I still couldn’t find words for.