This has been a rough week. Back to back the whole nation saw two black men gunned down for no apparent reason, and the commentary in the days following only provided more demeaning and prejudiced rhetoric.

I ache for my friends whose fear for their lives and for the lives of their children, parents, brothers, sisters, cousins was renewed this week.

I ache for the families and friends of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and Alva Braziel. These men, regardless of what they did or if they did anything at all, did not deserve the deaths they received.

I ache for every man, woman, and child who has been the subject of police brutality and who are met with stonewalling and denial from the perpetrators.

I ache for the officers who were injured and killed in Dallas and for their friends and families.

I ache with the horrible, dizzying fear that there will be no justice, that there will be no change, that after a couple weeks we will all go back to meager apathy.

This week, we are feeling the words of Warsan Shire when she wrote:

i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.

(from What They Did Yesterday Afternoon)

We hurt in so many places this week. Baton Rouge. Falcon Heights. Dallas. Houston.

Everywhere we are blocking freeways and we are shutting down streets and we are demanding change.

Yet everywhere we are met with resistance, with smoke, with arrests, with denial.

What is broken God blesses,

not the perfectly brick-on-brick prison

but the shattered wall

that announces freedom to the world,

proclaims the irascible spirit of the human

rebelling against lies, against betrayal,

against taking what is not deserved;

the human complaint is what God blesses,

(from What is Broken is What God Blesses by Jimmy Santiago Baca)

There is nothing I can say to remedy these aches, to heal our hurt, to diminish this pain.

Something is wrong when an injustice is committed and half our population refuses to condemn it.

But there is something we can all do to end this cycle, to change this system that condones violence and victimizes the innocent.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

The time is always right to do what is right.

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

(Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Whatever color you are, whatever faith you hold to, whatever city you live in, now is the time to stand for justice. Now is the time to tell the system that enough is enough.

No longer will we let a few men corrupt a police force.

No longer will we let that police force protect those men.

No longer will we stand by as our black brothers and sisters suffer in a nation that was built with their hands, with their blood, with their tears.

We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. (J.K. Rowling)

Today I choose to unite with those that seek justice. I choose to carry on despite my aches because there are others who ache indescribably more, and I cannot continue to allow such a deep hurt to exist.

Courage isn't having the strength to go on - it is going on when you don't have strength. (Napoleon Bonaparte)

#BlackLivesMatter