We Call for #JusticeOutLoud
by Ellen Buchman, The Opportunity Agenda
One of our country’s greatest promises is that we all have the right to move around in freedom. Irrespective of what we are doing – walking down the street, sitting in our car, enjoying a relaxing evening at home, or going for a jog – each of us should be able to enjoy the human dignity and freedom to relax, breathe, and just be in our lives. Everyone in our country deserves this, as well as to live free from the fear of violence or being harmed.
But too many people – Black men and women and other people of color in particular – live every day in fear of being harmed or even killed at the hands of the police, or a white person with a racist axe to grind. The cellphone video of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder, followed by this week’s video capturing the tragic killing of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police, serve as more stark reminders of the dehumanization and indignity faced by Black men in our country, and the need for us all to come together as a community to repudiate it and call for an end to the racist violence so many people continue to face.
This moment calls for social media condemnation, protest, and mourning. We are better than this. But we must also call for leadership and justice – from district attorneys, police chiefs, or anyone with the ability to use their power or position to say enough is enough. It is time to address once and for all the white supremacist violence proliferating in America. We cannot remain silent in this moment of anger and disbelief, and we cannot give anyone a pass because we think that they may not care or themselves be against justice. We must continue – and heighten – our work to tell the story about what America stands for, and to call out any injustice that prevents America from being the country that we all deserve it to be. To not do or say anything is to comply. It’s time we all come together to say enough is enough.
The time is now to call for #JusticeOutLoud for those who have been harmed or lost their lives, and to stand up and support those among us who are fearful for the lives of their families, friends or themselves because they are Black. As the saying goes, #SeeSomethingSaySomething. Use The Opportunity Agenda’s tools, Ten Lessons for Talking About Race and Improving Media Coverage and Public Perceptions of African-American Men and Boys, to uplift the values that we all should be able to enjoy. And use your voice to call for justice in the wake of the injustices faced by so many Black men and women in our country.
In community, justice will prevail. We must stand together to call for nothing less. #JusticeOutLoud
