1/8/21

By Josh Rubin

Are we better than this?

Ask black children who learn when they are young to keep their hands out of their pockets when police are near. Ask children who lose their connection to the world inside of prison tents on the border, never to be found again. Ask parents of those children if their hearts will ever heal.

Ask a generation behind bars. Ask the hungry and frightened who stand behind the walls we have built to hide their faces. Ask those of us who must look down from time to time, if only to wipe our tears.

Ask the downtrodden whose days are lived on a precipice designed for the fear it inspires, all to satisfy deranged greed. Ask all whose lives are tragedies, yet are forbidden even the weak grandeur of the tragic by a sense of shame and guilt, living in the cruel darkness of oppression.

Are we better than this?