It’s a new day. There’s rain today, rain that is trying to cleanse and heal the mud and pain, the guilt and shame of white discrimination and hatred of blacks and other minorities, through the ages.
I was born in Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020. My parents and brother and I moved to California when I was 7 and I returned at 16 one summer to visit aunts and uncles, cousins. The friends they found for me during my visit took me out one evening to a crowded outside event in downtown Minneapolis. A young black guy and I linked eyes and hi-fived each other in the spirit of the evening. From that moment I was viewed as a wayward teen, my uncle coming to L.A. and banging his fist on the Passover table, ranting about me liking black guys, to my parents. That was more than 50 years ago.
I was outraged then. Today, I’m sad as I recall that incident. A playful, joyful moment, spoiled. Black people were not people to like. The Corona virus is showing us just how deeply that attitude has been ingrained in our country.
It is showing us the way we have ignored the needs of people of color. It graphically is showing who the people are who are most likely to die from this disease, who are the ones most exposed, most vulnerable. Corona is showing us that it’s largely black people, people of color, of poverty, people who do our “essential work,” stock the shelves in the stores, run the mail, pick our food. They are the people who work for poverty wages, who don’t have health insurance, who can’t afford to quarantine at home. They are the people in nursing homes, prisons, meat packing or factory jobs, crowded together, who are least protected and cared for.
But, since the video of the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis, something has changed. A new, surging social awareness is emerging that wants justice today. There’s a new consciousness, of pandemic proportions taking hold. There’s a new receptivity. We have laws now that accept gay marriage, that people have a right to love who they want to love, to marry and be protected by the law of the land. There is a new consciousness about women and their right to decide how and when they are treated or touched by men, especially men in authoritative positions. Slowly, slowly, we are accepting people’s rights and differences. There’s a budding new acceptance of what it means to be a human being. The Corona virus and a new social awareness are two pandemics, world-wide challenges converging and forging a potential for human transformation.
The video of the cop murdering George Floyd, was more than most of us could handle. It was the way he turned away from his killing act, staring into the onlookers, as if to say “video all you want, nothing will happen to me.” He had one hand in his pocket, looking utterly dissociated from the very murder he was committing. It appeared to have no meaning to him at all. But unexpectedly, it began to gather meaning to the onlookers. Timeless rage took hold, police justice was demanded. Riots occurred. Today, that officer is arrested for second degree murder. His fellow officers are also under arrest.
Millions of people watched that video, and unlike the lynchings of the past, the killings that have become routine, not just over the last 400 years, but in recent years and days, suddenly, a human being is ruthlessly killed, and it matters, like never before. In this awakening, George Floyd, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Travon Martin, and all the others, are people. In an upsurge of outrage, we the people want accountability. We want JUSTICE, for black people, for all people of color, and even mistreated white people, like the 75 year old white man, a peaceful protester who was violently pushed down on the cement sidewalk and left to bleed alone. The officers who pushed him down, just continued past. Today they were fired from their jobs. There was concern for how that man was treated.
We are living in a time of archetypal change. I see the millions of people protesting, marching, carrying signs, bleeding, crying, demanding change as an archetypal struggle for humanity to have integrity, at long last. It has become a movement, bigger than any one of us, but a force for change we are all a part of.
This massive move to grow as a people implies humanity’s next big step. It foreshadows a sense of concern for people, a positive change in the way we experience and know each other. It gives us reason to hope. Let’s all push it forward, support it, put the right leaders in place. Keep the momentum going. The ancient science of Alchemy says, we find the gold in the dung heap. Out of the pain of centuries may come a new enlightenment. We may be ready.