The lives of black people deserve more fight than the occasional tweet when a video goes viral. #RunWithMaud was powerful but when’s the next time you’ll think, let alone act, on the multifaceted layers of injustice in this country that maintain climate allowing this to continue?

There may not be a viral video every day to rally behind but that doesn’t remove the fact that the layers of injustice are so deeply embedded in our society that only by learning about the roots will we solve them.

The message that the collective complacency sends to us is that being killed extrajudicially is unacceptable (as long as the proof is right in front of you), but the intentional systemic barriers preventing good health and upward mobility are okay/on black people to solve

The fact that black people are dying at disproportionate rates from COVID, in part due to years of housing policy putting people at higher risk for health issues that can react fatally with the disease, deserves the same collective attention as anything else

Instead, we see a conversation about the health and lifestyle habits of black Americans in a blame game of sorts and in the case of Ahmaud we will dissect every step he took as if something could justify his death. The vilification is exhausting.

I could go on but the point is: we deserve more and we deserve better. There may not be a video to rally behind everyday, but there is so much more that deserves your attention, you just have to look for it