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In solidarity with people protesting the killing of George Floyd

I am not especially qualified to write on the subject of racism or the militarization of policing or how the criminal justice system perpetuates poverty and loss of opportunity based on race. I am white, grew up in predominantly white neighborhoods and have always had certain expectations based on those privileges. Like most people I have my own story flavored by my own challenges. None of these challenges are based on race.

I have watched from my safe community where police generally act like good people. (Obviously this is from my standpoint which may not represent everyone's experience.) As a doctor I have cared for police refugees from big cities, retired officers whose experiences of police culture drove them away and marked their personalities. I have enough connection with people on the receiving end of the criminal justice system in other communities that I am not entirely ignorant, but my experience is definitely limited.

So in this time of Covid 19 and now widespread demonstrations and rioting, I feel pretty helpless and useless to influence the changes that are needed to make things better. As an unwilling bystander (I will gladly do anything I can to contribute) I will at least say on this blog:

  • The lives of black and brown people are sacred and they deserve respect, opportunity and to be safe from injury by law enforcement.
  • The criminal justice system needs significant reform so that it will contribute to helping pull people out of poverty rather than chaining them to it.
  • The illnesses of poverty, violence, drug and alcohol abuse need to be managed first and foremost at the level of opportunity through education, jobs and healthy communities.
I will do my best to support people who are standing up and marching to be heard by donating to organizations such as The Bail Project that at least help give people in the system a hand. 

As a physician and an old person (I was young once and politically active) I am concerned about a couple of things. I hate to see indiscriminate destruction, especially in neighborhoods that are already poor. I would like to see more people aware of the fact that we still have a pandemic going on and that we know that close to 50% of people who are infective with Covid 19 have no symptoms. Wearing masks to a demonstration is a no-brainer. If you don't believe in the germ theory, at least it keeps your beautiful face from becoming a viral news photograph. And I'm angry that people who want to fan the flame of anger and fear are doing so, either by using inflammatory rhetoric or by actually physically inciting or committing violence.

But despite these issues, the real and important point is that George Floyd was killed by police officers who thought, because of their training and institutional culture, that it was OK, and this is only the tip of an iceberg of widespread police violence in black communities. The demonstrations and the anger they represent is real and needs to result in real change.

(President Obama had some great things to say about how to go about making those changes in this article. It's a brief and inspiring read.)

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