For the past two years, as I’ve traveled the country, spoken on college campuses, and even right here on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, I’ve frequently made the point that it is hard to know a moment in history in when you’re in it. On an average day where you are stressed about work, school, bills, your health, your children, your relationships, and everything else, it can be hard to feel like you are in a historic moment.
But after what we’ve seen from Trump’s first 11 days in office, I’m not sure I need to make that statement anymore.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, without social media, without news, without friends, without any awareness of the world we’re in, and have been doing nothing but binge watching cartoons and sitcom reruns on Netflix, then you are now keenly aware that we are living in troubling times.
You don’t need me to illuminate that point for you with slides or images or videos. You don’t need stats or infographics. You don’t need to hear the emotion in my voice or see the concern on my face. By now, if you live in this country and have a heart, it is now clear to you that we live in deeply troubling times.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again. If you’ve ever played a mind movie where you wondered who you’d be or what you’d do if you lived in the Civil Rights Movement – you now longer have to imagine. You are living in that moment right now. You are living in a time of heroes and villains. You are living in a time where you have to make a decision, with every fiber of your being, what side you are on.
Either you are for ethical treatment of refugees and immigrants or you aren’t. Either you are for police accountability or you aren’t. Either you see mass incarceration as a true human rights crisis or you don’t. Either LGBTQ folk deserve equal rights or they don’t. Either all people deserve equal pay for equal rights or they don’t. Either people should be paid a living wage or not.
If you think you haven’t chosen a side on any of those issues, then you actually have. If you are not actively for those things, then your silence is as responsible for where we are as nation as anything else.
If you have not yet joined a protest or a march over these past 11 days, then you no doubt know someone who has. Millions of Americans from coast to coast have joined them. What’s clear to me right now is that these protests and marches and demonstrations are not going away. They are growing. They are spreading.
Source: Black America Web | Shaun King
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