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Unrest




What a difference a week makes, and not in a good way. Everything going on feels like déjà vu. The most important question is: will anything come of the unrest this time, or will we all just quietly go back to our old lives?
When Trump became president, I mentioned to my husband that I thought he’d send us into a new civil war, and it looks like that could be happening. I, obviously, wasn’t the only one with that thought; there were plenty in the far left media who were bringing up what a divider on every level this man is, and not just on race.
It’s been anxiety-producing living close to downtown and hearing police choppers fly overhead, then seeing the barricades and boarded up windows of shops and restaurants already hurt by the pandemic. Experiencing a militarized police is scary enough right now. The thought of Agent Orange sending in the military to bring about what he considers law and order, even though he had no trouble with white protesters carrying semi-automatic weapons storming state governments over closures due to the pandemic, is beyond terrifying, but not surprising. He doesn’t care about law and order, or justice, or human life, it’s all about how he’s perceived and his own warped view of power.
As a white woman I know I’ll never fully understand the anger and frustration going on, but I do have some idea. After all, women of every color and creed have not fared well against men, especially white men, through history.
I want to believe we’ll get through this together and that there will be some real systemic change this time, but that may just be wishful thinking, the thinking that focuses on Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech, rather than all the violence and anger of protests. Just last night, a local news station had to defend themselves from viewers who claimed that by covering the protests they’re just inflaming things even more. Obviously the president would prefer we all just ignore what he and others don’t want to see, but that won’t make it go away. We need the media now more than ever, along with all the citizen journalists filming with their phones what we wouldn’t be able to see otherwise. As Robert Bresson said, Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen. 
However, the initial question still stands: will this do any good, or are we doomed to repeat the same painful mistakes over and and over again?
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