How do I respond when those closest to me say “AllLivesMatter”?

I was never one to stay quiet about things I believed in. When I watched the Towers go down on live TV in November of 2001, I might have only been 7 years old, but I was old enough to feel the shock that went through the entire country — the world, even — at the sight of the flames, the ruble, and bodies. My mom came to get me from school soon after, and we cried all the way home and spent the evening curled up in my parent’s bedroom watching the news and holding each other. A peace-lover from the start, the only thing I felt besides pain for those who were lost and those who survived was the swell of something that I can now only identify as confusion:

“why does this happen?”

On the playgound, I would get picked on for wanting to run around in the fields, and for stepping in in the middle of fights because I thought it was wrong. In highschool, I had friends who would roll their eyes and tell me to shut up when I would go on a tangent about the state of the environment, civil injustices — when someone made a racist/offensive joke, I was the one to call them out on it.

It was right around this time that I became active on social media, and rather than post about my latest heartbreak or what I had for dinner, I quickly turned my facebook feed into a constant stream of news — Social Activism, Feminism, Animal Rights and Welfare, Environmental news and so, so much more. I was — and am — as loud as I could be about the things that mattered to me, regardless of how my Friends felt about what they were seeing — be it my pro-choice posts or the latest video showing hundreds of dead whales washed up on beaches across the world who’s stomachs were full of trash bags.

I am lucky to say that I now surround myself with people who, if they don’t have anything nice to say, they don’t say anything at all. Of course I know that I am extreme in my beliefs, and of course I know that there are people who see my posts everyday and just go, “oh boy, here she goes again.” Of course I know that I probably make people angry, that I probably offend people, that there are those who disagree with me. I think the only reason why I’m not constantly engaged in internet warfare is because, while I am avid about my beliefs, I don’t go looking to pick fights with people who are on the opposing side. Yes, I may be loud, but I don’t make it impossible for someone to tune me out if they really want to.

That is, until now.

I graduated from college nearly three months ago — I am working my first real job and now have to present myself as a professional who represents my workplace no matter where I go, what I do, and also — and this is new for my generation — what I post online. I work in a public library in a urban area — one of the few white faces to be seen there. It is easy for tensions to get high, but so far I have only had to deal with one patron who got into it with me about race, and she was most likely suffering from mental illness and looking for a fight (which, I will add, I did not give to her — that situation is another post for another day). No, the people I am most worried about now are actually the people who I work with — the people who I have become friends with and am now connected to on these social media platforms where I have always taken the liberty to express myself.

When Alton Stirling, then Philando Castile, then those five cops were killed, the internet exploded. I can say with confidence that I watched the #BlackLivesMatter movement from where it began in 2012 and have shown my support for the movent in every way I, as a little white girl from Cleveland, felt I could. I would scoff at #AllLiveMatter posts and retaliate with posts and news articles of my own, basically saying yes, of course #AllLivesMatter, but right now we are focusing on the black ones because those are the ones our society seems to be ignoring for oh, I don’t know, some 400+ years and enough is REALLY, REALLY enough.

But I am a professional now — so what do I do when one of my fellow professionals is posting #AllLivesMatter and discussing how she thinks #BlackLivesMatter somehow means that it is right to belittle the other lives that are taken — especially in light of those cops getting killed in Dallas last week? Our posts show up long side one another — we see all that the other has to say, and for the first time in my whole life, I came across a post this morning and I HESITATED over she Share button, because I was thinking of everything that my co-worker had not just been posting on Facebook, but also what she had been saying at work the previous day.

Of course, what I feel in my heart will never change, but what will happen if something I post on social media really does get me into trouble someday? My resolve is to never censor myself, and you shouldn’t either, Oh Reader. But the question remains: what do you do when those #AllLivesMatter people you have discussed with your #BlackLivesMatter friends become people you see and interact with on a daily basis? I think the answer lies within what kind of environment we want to create for not only ourselves but those around us: to embrace the differences, embrace each other, see that we are really all just trying to do what we think is right, and at the end of the day, not hesitate to hit the Share button on something that speaks to the deepest part of our hearts.