First Justice, then Peace

It is beyond time that the illusion of justice in this country is shattered. It is time to understand and change the ways our systems fail black citizens, minorities, the marginalized. How can there be peace, when our police and our criminal “justice” system break the morality they are meant to uphold. When they actively besiege justice and truth.

We can not have faith in a system that perpetuates oppression. We can not trust in law enforcement who abuse their power with impunity. We can no longer pretend justice exists when the outcomes of a court of law have so much to do with race, class, and wealth.

“True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

During times of social uprising, of mass perspective shifts, it is not peace that is of concern, rather complacency towards injustice and mistruth. A calm society, does not mean that systemic injustice does not continue, often that it continues unnoticed and unaddressed. And it is that silent injustice which cuts the deepest. When there is complacency, when that which should never have been tolerated goes on ignored, we have failed.

To everyone complaining about the ways these voices and these protests have inconvenienced their lives, I say it’s about time. This is about so much greater. The very safety and comfort that you take for granted, doesn’t exist for so many in this country. Rather our “justice” system causes millions of minorities to live in fear, it forces them to accept injustice. It’s about time the thunder of change destroys that illusion. That it collapses the systems that create stability through oppression, and motivates us all to rebuild, together.