I had planned on writing a follow up to my most recent article, America, Where Have You Gone?, to clarify details and go into greater depth about the issues this country is facing, but with the most recent events in the news I felt it appropriate to address those.

So far in 2016, there have been 27,312 gun related incidents, 7,072 of those being fatalities, and 178 mass shootings (shootings involving 4 or more people). Most recently, law enforcement has been in the spotlight for the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Now I’m not going to go into details about either incident because most of you probably know the details or have access to them on any news website or TV station, but both men were gunned down by police officers and both incidents were caught on video. Now you can argue either side you want whether it was homicide or self-defense, but regardless 946 people have been shot and killed by police in 2016, so obviously there is a problem. No man or woman should feel prejudiced and profiled by the police and fear for their lives when they should not, yet they do. There is a problem with our criminal justice system, but the problem doesn’t lie in the races, genders, or in the police; it lies in all of us.

The problem is hatred and fear. We fear what we don’t know or don’t understand. We fear each other. We fear the Muslim at the airport. We fear the black man at the routine traffic stop. We fear the police officer at that same stop. We fear so much and know so little. We know so little about our brothers and sisters and that fear has translated into hatred. That hatred has penetrated and spread into our society and country like a drop of food coloring into a glass of water.

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they must realize we are all different; all 7 billion of us. The day we realize this, we will finally be able to stand together as one and fight oppression. Until that day, we will be divided as we ever were. Its time to end the #blacklivesmatter, #alllivesmatter, and #bluelivesmatter. Right now, we act as if no lives matter. We kill each other senselessly every day. It is now 2016, and we do not have time for races or genders. It is a time when we need to pick our brother and sister up when they need it, and look past our differences and learn to appreciate them.

From the famous words of the well-regarded and beloved Martin Luther King Jr., “When we look at modern man, we have to face the fact...that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast to his scientific and technological abundance; We've learned to fly the air like birds, we've learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we haven't learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters.” His words could not be more prevalent during this dark time in our country.

In the past 100 years, we have come so far, yet we still have along road ahead of us to equality and justice. If we do not make up this lost ground, we will be defeated as a country and equality will never be reached. It is time we take a stand and demand justice, not only for our brothers and sisters, but also for us. “There is more power in unity than division.”- Emanuel Cleaver

Hours after I wrote the above piece, 12 Dallas police officers were gunned down, 5 of which passed away because of hatred. This was committed by a man who “wanted to kill white people- especially white cops.” Racism is real and is a two way street. My heart is broken and my prayers go out to the families and children of the officers who risked their lives to protect the BLM protestors. It sickens me to see some people say that they are glad the cops died for what they did to the two men in Louisiana and Minnesota. A life is a life, and now our country has lost 7 people this week who did not deserve to die, 5 of which ran into the battle while covering for the protestors. We need to start standing up for our men and women in blue, and stop believing the actions of a few bad ones reflect the feelings of the hundreds on thousands who took an oath to protect the people of this country. I would hate to see our country without them, but some people could benefit from seeing that just to know how much they risk and do for us. Fathers, brothers, sons, lost their lives this week because of hatred and fear. I have said and will say time and time again that violence leads to more violence. Martin Luther King did not die for this violence, he died for a dream; a dream of a better world where we would all be able to stand together as one. I am afraid to say this dream has not yet come true. May God bless all of us, and the United States of America in our darkest hour.

*Shooting statistics taken from http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/