Things I Don't Write About

I wrote about Ferguson tonight.

And there are a few things I usually don't write about.

Ferguson has been one of them, for a couple of reasons. One is the reactions. It makes me ill to see people I love say things like, "Well, he provoked..." or "Well, he wasn't complying...."

I can't sit and argue that and still face those people every day.

There are other topics and other reasons, but mostly I haven't written about Ferguson.

But tonight, I wrote about Ferguson.

See, there was this group of protesters who woke up to find a noose in their camp area, and when I googled, it seemed like nobody was writing about it. How is that a nonstory?

So I messaged the youth pastor who had started sharing their story, and I got some information and shared it on, wrote it up, made it officially news on a news site on the internet in the world.

(I feel like I'm advertising but because I'm talking about it here it is. Nobody's making you click.)

And now I'm (well, not now because I got up, but a few minutes ago) lying in my bed, in my temperature-controlled environment, with my walls and ceiling and babies and safe and comfortable (moderately- two toddlers in a bed means moderately comfortable is good), while the people who are actually there, the guys who woke up to a noose, and the people who lost a son or brother or friend, are not lying in a bed with soft sheets, but walking the streets, sitting in living rooms and crying, holding hands and praying, pleading for justice (which I don't think is a possible thing here - even if an investigation proves beyond doubt that this kid never did anything worse than sticking his tongue out at his brother, nobody's gonna give him his life back, so where is justice?), pleading for change, pleading for it not to happen to another kid, pleading for something to make sense.

And I feel guilty for my vague nod to the possibility the police aren't lying about *every single* thing, because I know I'm supposed to be neutral but it's like being neutral on climate change or the sky being blue, so that I feel like I'm supposed to say, "Others argue that the sky is purple with pink polka dots, and color is subjective, but blue is consistent with the language of poem and song." And I feel for those journalists who get slammed for putting on a scientist and a creationist, because 'both sides' is an expected thing even when one is not a side at all.

I hope I gave an accurate depiction while being fair. I hope change happens. I hope Michael Brown's family gets a thing that resembles justice enough to give them some scrap of peace. It can't be more than a scrap, when you lose your baby. I can't even fathom. I look at my babies and I can't even fathom. I know that change is gonna happen, because change does, but change in forty or eighty years when it comes naturally through generations passing on and new ones seeing things differently isn't enough. A lot of people can die in 40-80 years.

What can I do? Nothing but rail and holler. But I guess I can rail and holler, anyway. Even if what I get in response makes me sick. I reckon I can take a little sick to try to make somebody's babies not die, even if it's only try. It's the tool within my reach. Rail and holler.