Thread by @lisarokusek

The question of our now is how do we react to hearing truths that tilt the axis of our world when we realize our blissful ease exists because we are unaware of suffering of others. In many cases our ease is built from that suffering.

Will we truly listen or do we deny?

We can’t talk justice or redemption or forgiveness until we have a reckoning.
Until truth is spoken and sinks into our bones.

A lot of men are shocked right now. Just like a lot of white people keep getting shocked. So much shock at our history, our bloody, unjust, intolerant, unequal unkind unseeing denial of who we said we were. It only counted if you were the right kind.

I say it is long past time to be shocked.

If you are shocked right now in this moment at police killing black people with impunity, or men assaulting and trying to or raping women free from consequence, you are indeed lacking in information & exposure to life lived by so many of your neighbors. I'll not shame you for it.

But I will ask you to move past shock right now. Immediately. I'll ask you to listen and embrace these truths as truth.

No defensiveness.

No denial.

Just listen.

Hear the pain, the anguish, the loss. See the injustice for what it is. It is all our problem.

Right now those with power in media in government in business are once again trying to sweep this back under wraps to avoid a reckoning. To keep power in what they consider to be the right hands. White male hands, with means.

But we also have power. We who let the scales fall from our eyes have power. Those of us who realize we can demand accountability for the abuse of power have power. Those of us who have seen what cannot be unseen. Who are changed.

But not if we stay frozen in shock.

Not if we deny this outpouring of uncovering.

Be changed. Hear the hard truths.

Amplify the voices clamoring for a more just world. Work to change the world.

This is the way forward past shock and denial.