Senses working overtime #266

1 Burnout

Seems this is the current topic around the media (and our workplace). Here are some pointers to relieve the stress.

2 Poetry Corner

Poem for My Love

How do we come to be here next to each other   
in the night
Where are the stars that show us to our love   
inevitable
Outside the leaves flame usual in darkness   
and the rain
falls cool and blessed on the holy flesh   
the black men waiting on the corner for   
a womanly mirage
I am amazed by peace
It is this possibility of you
asleep
and breathing in the quiet air

June Jordan 

3 LeBron James

...has used his celebrity status to form a proactive group to promote voter rights. Could this, and other initiatives happening world wide, finally address privilege and racism effectively? It's starting to feel like it's possible.

4 American cops - the stats

American police shoot, kill and imprison more people than other developed countries. Here's the data.

5 Media responses to protests

Overtime: Seth Godin's stance: Black Lives Matter.

The systemic, cruel and depersonalizing history of Black subjugation in my county has and continues to be a crime against humanity. It’s based on a desire to maintain power and false assumptions about how the world works and how it can work. It’s been amplified by systems that were often put in place with mal-intent, or sometimes simply because they felt expedient. It’s painful to look at and far more painful to be part of or to admit that exists in the things that we build.

We can’t permit the murder of people because of the color of their skin. Institutional racism is real, it’s often invisible, and it’s pernicious.

And White Supremacy is a loaded term precisely because the systems and their terrible effects are very real, widespread and run deep.

The benefit of the doubt is powerful indeed, and that benefit has helped me and people like me for generations. I’m ashamed of how we got here, and want to more powerfully contribute and model how we can get better, together.

It doesn’t matter how many blog posts about justice I write, or how clear I try to be about the power of diversity in our organizations. Not if I’m leaving doubt about the scale and enormity of the suffering that people feel, not just themselves, but for their parents before them and for the kids that will follow them.

It’s easier to look away and to decide that this is a problem for someone else. It’s actually a problem for all of us. And problems have solutions and problems are uncomfortable.