Dear Kids,
Your Father loves you.
Your Father is learning and growing every day, just as you will someday.
Your Father did not know the true weight of the article category he titled Dual Realities until now.
Your Father is a white male American.
Your Mother is a black female American.
And you Children, will be a beautiful blend of both races.
In America, that means something that I have not fully grasped at 26 years of age.
What I do know though, is that an insidious disease called racism infected our nation from the beginning.
It is woven tightly into our culture and into the mechanisms that society runs on.
Racism will affect you more than me.
Racism will put you at larger risk just because of the way you look.
In the week that I write this article, racism is killing people that look like your Mother.
Racism is killing black Americans without justice served on the perpetrators.
There is evil in this world that we have brought you into.
As your Father, it will be my duty to keep you safe, to educate you, to nourish you, and to hold you and your Mother more dear in my heart than anything else on this Earth.
I will do my best.
As you mature and grow, you will also understand that humanity at its best is a mural of joy, hope and abundance.
This week there has been an abundance of awakenings all across our nation. An abundance of peaceful protest. An abundance of all races exercising their God-given right to assemble and to voice their truths.
We are building upon centuries of work laid down by courageous and hopeful generations before us.
We will not let them down. We will hope, we will fight, we will overcome, and we will love our way to victory.
May our efforts bring you a better life. A life full of belief, hope and wisdom. A childhood of innocence absent of “The Talk” and fully immersed in fun and adventure.
We fight for each other and for the promise of you every day. May God bless your lives, and may God deliver us fortitude and resolve for the cause.
One day we will have Liberty and Justice for ALL.
I pray that is your day.
Love,
Dad
Thank you for reading the above letter. Yesterday at 3:45PM I honored George Floyd with 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence, let that be my last silence on this topic ever.
As we vowed to at the launch of this site, we will Take Action to create tangible change in our community. For the cause, we will do or have done the following:
- Put our money where our mouth is, we will not burden our souls with empty words. 30 Mile Nation has contributed financially to the following causes and will continue to look for opportunities to contribute: Michigan Solidarity Bail Fund, Columbus Freedom Fund, Minnesota Freedom Fund, and the Grassroots Law Project
- We will be there for people when they are not in the room. If racism is present, we will speak up to denounce it and remove its power
- We will protest in our community and we will stand in solidarity with those who are oppressed
- We will serve as an educational beacon that promotes increased prospective, increases self-reliance and lifts up humanity
- We will fight for the ideals that this Nation has not yet reached, for our sake and for our children’s sake