It is an ugly time in America.
The recent horrific acts of domestic terrorism have many Americans rethinking going to the local shopping center, the county fair, or out to dinner, lest we be shot and killed in a hail of gunfire, as was the fate of the 22 people killed in a Wal-Mart in El Paso by a white supremacist who advocated dividing this nation into territories by race. On the heels of the El Paso mass shooting, a gunman in Dayton killed nine people and injured 27, even though the police were able to stop him in less than 30 seconds.
As we face this physical and emotional carnage, it becomes even more urgent to acknowledge and reject President Trump’s cynical use of racist rhetoric to divide us for perceived political advantage.
False divisions that seek to divide us stoke extremism and mask the fact that so many of the problems we face are national problems, suffered intensely in both urban and rural communities. If we allow ourselves to be divided and consumed with racial strife, as the President seems to desire, we will fail to protect ourselves on a host of health and safety issues, such as gun violence, including mass assaults, inadequate health care, and dangers from our decaying infrastructure where the President’s policies will hurt many, if not most of us, regardless of race or ethnicity.
Read the full piece here.
