Inequality is the underlying cause of four major pandemics that are sweeping the streets.
The pandemic of aggressive, uncivil leadership seems to be as contagious as COVID - 19. Neither has gone away. The market system that regales profit over people, seeks to restore two other deadly pandemics in the wake of these damages, chronic consumption, and restless travel disorder. The symptom of these two pandemics is discrimination, inequity, climate change, and the mass extinction of millions of species that took millennia to evolve. Our leadership's profit imperative is the direct cause of over 100,000 citizens losing their lives. Their failure to act responsively and responsibly deserves a complete criminal investigation. Our government's knee has symbolically been on the throats of its people for four years.
To heal we will have to reduce the cultural erosion of our respect for life, Our loss of respect for each other, and for nature. Restoration brick by brick or shall I say soul by soul will take time and wise leaders. Wise leaders, who are moms, and sisters, brothers and fathers. Take a moment to reflect and to rise to this occasion. Take one minute right now and just breathe, empty your mind, reflect with consideration on something important to you. Now consider how you could protect that.
The murder of George Floyd was a misuse of power that perfectly reflects the injustice all around us. In some ways we have all been screaming, I can't breathe. The brutal killing off of nature, civility, culture, equality, justice, liberty is a blatant misuse of power for profit. The simple yet packed phrase, liberty, and justice for all! This speaks not only to populations of people but to all life. All life is sacred and until we build that vocabulary into our daily lives we will not be able to protect the planet or our civil -izations for our children. We are eroding our civilizations as we pander to pleasure and profit. None of us can breath and many of us have felt a knee on their throat as the disparity of wealth and resources is cemented into our civil system.
We do not have to go back to business as usual. Now that COVID has assisted us in laying bare so many of the cracks in our infrastructure, we should begin the necessary steps to not only rebuild but to remodel this broken system. Our design imperative is equity for all people, equity for nature. Equity in education, healthcare, and the opportunity to thrive. My solution would be to harness the carbon cycle to sequester carbon-dioxide emissions and turn them into food, into healthy soils and abundant habitat, into parks for children. Create a clean energy economy that cleans the air for our children to breathe. So many children suffer from respiratory illness due to pollution and the oil companies have kept a knee on their throat as they cry out for air in our urban environments. It is time for real change! This is our chance, we would be wise to be loud, to be organized, and to show up with civil solutions for peace and justice for all. Thugs are thugs no matter how white their house. The illegal use of force by our government against its own people can not and will not stand. One way or another we will bring them to their knees.
By Daisy Carlson Photograph by Logan Weaver Unsplash.