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Perspective: Time To Move Beyond Adjustments To An Unjust Society

Clay Banks
/
Unsplash

May of 1963, at age 10, I sat watching Walter Cronkite report about police officers in Birmingham Alabama turning fire hoses and dogs on civil rights marchers. Including children my age.

Today people are still marching for civil rights and protection from the police.

14 years ago I marched with over 400,000 people in the streets of Chicago joining in the peaceful call for a path to citizenship for over 2 million people. Police wearing riot gear lined the route.

Today millions are still waiting for that path.

I do not say this to discourage those who are marching in the streets today. However this is not new. I believe each new cycle of injustice followed by outrage moves our society closer to the hard work of true transformation.

Police brutality is not new. It is another of a long list of symptoms which exist in societies where there is inequality and injustice.

The goal must be more than disruption. The end result has to be more than adjustments to an unjust society. Once the protest signs are laid down, those who carried the signs must then commit to the “long haul”.

Guided by feelings of love for our fellow citizens and for the society we want to see the slow step-by-step work of replacing, transforming, and rebuilding society must carry on.

I’m Dan Kenney and this is my perspective.

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