Enough is Enough

Photo Credit: Kendra Berglund

I started All This Presents: News That Should Not be Happening as a way to call awareness to racial, economic and gender inequalities in our country but I didn't realize the toll it would take on me. Week after week, going through the news, reading these awful stories of police shootings, the support of rape culture within our legislation and racism in our schools - it hurt. 

During first few weeks, after I would post, I felt like I was doing good work.  I was getting the word out, the first step to change.  This past week however I couldn't bring myself to type another black boy's name who had been shot and killed by a police officer who would later be acquitted. I kept thinking that, this will be the week where there is no blood spilled because "they were existing while also being black" but every week there was a name. Jordan Edward's, Darius Smith, Brendan Hester, remembering Kalief Browder... 

Then there was gender.  Trans students losing their rights, women afraid they would lose their healthcare, teens not being allowed to attend school because of their ethnic hair. Of course some of these stories did eventually end happily but not enough. 

Do you want to know how long I was working on this project before I began to feel hopeless?  3 weeks.  That's all it took for me to feel like I wasn't doing good work but shouting into an endless void of hate, ignorance, and institutionalized discrimination.  What we are up against is hundreds of years of calculated inequality that will not disappear just because we want it to or because it is the right thing to do.  

We are in a time where antiquated prejudice ideals are fighting to remain as part of our nation. Where tradition is being pushed as the norm but I have to say, just because we have done it that way before doesn't mean we need to continue.  Tradition should not be synonymous with oppression. 

Enough of cops treating black people as less than. Enough treating women as unequal. Enough of the education system serving as an institution that pushes people of color into prisons. Enough blaming the color of people's skin for the contaminated water they are being forced to pay for. 

The fact that a segment entitled, News That Should Not be Happening could adopt the nomenclature of simply, "the news" is fucked up.  It's time to demand better, to live better and to treat each other better.  Enough is enough.