I likely wouldn’t have known about Freddie Gray at all, or the depth of continuing issues of U.S. racism, if that Baltimore CVS wasn’t set on fire.
At the time, I was teaching high school engineering and physics at a private school just north of Baltimore. Another teacher at school mentioned that she was going to be discussing in her classes the death of Freddie Gray and issues of police violence and systemic racism, so I decided to find a couple videos to watch in class to lead us into discussions. It wasn’t a topic I felt very comfortable discussing with students in class, but it seemed important enough to bring the conversation up, follow my values, and see where things went.
I found the following video; after watching it a couple times, something clicked for me.
My initial perspective on the Baltimore Uprising was that what happened to Freddie Gray was wrong, but destroying property was not the way to make things better. In the video, Wolf Blitzer tries to get Deray McKesson to condemn the acts of destruction. However, Deray stands focused in attempting to bring Wolf back to understanding the why behind the destruction: people are in pain, people are angry. And then it clicked for me.
Smoke signals from that burning CVS woke me up to severe well-being issues that I was ignorant of. What’s some damaged property compared with the real suffering of people?
I’m grateful for those smoke signals, because it opened me up to new levels of understanding, compassion, and commitment in my life.
I don’t want the transformation of our environmental awareness and actions to also necessitate the destruction of property, this time at the hands of the climate and damaged ecosystems. I'd rather us solve these problems without calamity.
New Orleans, Houston, Puerto Rico, the Great Barrier Reef, and others. These are smoke signals. Are we waking up yet?
What’s the smoke signal you think will get the fossil fuel industry (and the politicians on its payroll) to wake up?
At the time, I was teaching high school engineering and physics at a private school just north of Baltimore. Another teacher at school mentioned that she was going to be discussing in her classes the death of Freddie Gray and issues of police violence and systemic racism, so I decided to find a couple videos to watch in class to lead us into discussions. It wasn’t a topic I felt very comfortable discussing with students in class, but it seemed important enough to bring the conversation up, follow my values, and see where things went.
I found the following video; after watching it a couple times, something clicked for me.
My initial perspective on the Baltimore Uprising was that what happened to Freddie Gray was wrong, but destroying property was not the way to make things better. In the video, Wolf Blitzer tries to get Deray McKesson to condemn the acts of destruction. However, Deray stands focused in attempting to bring Wolf back to understanding the why behind the destruction: people are in pain, people are angry. And then it clicked for me.
Smoke signals from that burning CVS woke me up to severe well-being issues that I was ignorant of. What’s some damaged property compared with the real suffering of people?
I’m grateful for those smoke signals, because it opened me up to new levels of understanding, compassion, and commitment in my life.
I don’t want the transformation of our environmental awareness and actions to also necessitate the destruction of property, this time at the hands of the climate and damaged ecosystems. I'd rather us solve these problems without calamity.
New Orleans, Houston, Puerto Rico, the Great Barrier Reef, and others. These are smoke signals. Are we waking up yet?
What’s the smoke signal you think will get the fossil fuel industry (and the politicians on its payroll) to wake up?
How sad to think that nature speaks and mankind doesn't listen.
- Victor Hugo, 1840
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