Hi everyone.

There's currently a lot of anger, violence, and frustration in my country right now. I hate that it had to come to this, but the dominoes had been falling for a while. Of course there could have been many ways other than this, for passion to erupt in plumes of flame and smoke, but sometimes it needs to be chaotic, demanding, cacophonous, in order to be heard.

So here we go. Black lives matter.

If anyone has a problem with this, feel free to reach out to me. If anyone feels slighted by this movement, please come talk to me. I personally don't believe accusing people of being 'part of the problem' will help recruit any new members to the cause. I am also not about making this political. If you're not American and you're reading this, this message applies to you too! These concepts are universal.

I am not here to yell at you, to shame you for silence, to accuse you for not doing enough, for not speaking out, for not being enough of an ally. Because I have been there too. Because I still find myself there sometimes, paralyzed by the ugly roar, unsure of how to take the first step. We all have lives disrupted by this pandemic, after all. Even so, allow me to explain.

If BLM makes you uncomfortable, it is because it is the truth. It is uncomfortable because it is loud and insistent and it is holding decades and centuries of pain. It is rooted in the dead bodies hanging from the trees like strange fruit. It is planted from the seeds of ripe melons that were split apart for the harvesting. I am not here to accuse you of being racist.

I too have biases. I too am racist. I too have prejudices.

But I am working with myself to dismantle them. I have this idea in my head that if we call out the biases, the things that make us uncomfortable in our hearts, then we become better people along the way as well. Anger is never self-sufficient. It fades away eventually. And when it does, what remains? We can go back to how things were, or we can make a change.

Let this be an opportunity for change to take place within us as individuals, to help raise a brighter future generation. Set down your loneliness, and donate some money to the organizations working hard to further the cause for black bodies.

This message is for the hesitant, the unsure, the questioning. The ones who didn't sign up to campaign with a social movement. The ones who wonder if it really matters.

The answer is yes. Black lives do.

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading. We will return to our regularly scheduled programming soon 🙏 Until then, stay woke, trust in your good intentions, be well.