Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
This month we take our time to remember Black History and move forward with equality and human rights. Black History month is a time to honor the legacy of African Americans and Canadians both in the past and the present.
Last year in 2014 a new movement started called #blacklivesmatter after a series brutal police killings in the United States. The media showed a resurgence of racism and it came back into play and people finally realized the extent of it’s still lingering. Due to this huge protests and social movements began. It’s unfortunate that the mindset of inequality has not been completely demolished yet.
This year we celebrate the lives of everybody who has ever been hurt being a minority. To the black women who have to deal with the abuse and harassment of being female, being black and being lesbian or transgendered. You are the heroes. The ones who go through every day with your head up, support families and yourself and struggle at the hands of inequality.
This goes out to all of those women who were killed because of this harassment or who ended up hurt or in a hospital or prison. To those whose lives were put at stake for no reason other than the fact that they were born a minority in a close minded world.
This goes out to those who took their own lives because they got the worst of what the world had to offer and couldn’t stand to stay another day with us. To those so in pain they felt their only choice was to leave. Rest peacefully.
We take this month as a moment to remember but also a moment to push forward. Let’s stand together and work on everyday changes such as putting comments and cruel spirited jokes to rest. Let’s work on finding equal pay in the work place and building up neighborhoods in poverty. Getting everybody healthy food, a safe home and top of the line education.
Building up ideas that merit should be the basis of jobs and pay rather than an ingrained idea in society that has yet to completely vanish.
Let’s remember how far we have come. We are not yet there but we’ve come a long way with so many African Americans and Canadians standing up and risking their life and mental health to offer their support, dreams and change to others to make sure that we live in a world where we are all comfortable, all safe to walk out, to go to work and school and to climb up the ladder of success.
Take a moment this month to donate, change and help. To remember and to get better. To stop discrimination and to become informed of what goes on around you.
