True. I don’t remember ever getting any more than a form letter when I write to them … and I don’t identify myself as white either, but I do identify myself as a constituent. Even so, I gotta keep trying or otherwise I get to think of myself as a “good German” from back in WWII. I’m not mad enough to burn down a Wendy’s … but then, it wasn’t my partner who was killed by police during a mixup over falling asleep in a takeout line.

The violence around the BLM protests is complicated. The vast majority of protests are peaceful but that doesn’t make the news; if it bleeds, it leads. Of the violence: some of it is the result of centuries of anger and frustration stemming from slavery and its aftermath. Some of it is opportunistic, and some of it (perhaps the worst of it) is perpetuated by reight-wing counter protesters trying to make the movement look bad. Some of it makes a big splash in the news but does little real damage — think tagging buildings and tearing down statues — while other incidents (especially those involving alt-reight counter protesters) end up in loss of human life. But there’s one thing I can say for sure: if the powers that be would listen to the people — all of the people — then those who feel a need to do something drastic wouldn’t have to go that far.

Unfortunately, politicians don’t listen to us unless we have big numbers and big money, and they haven't for a long time. I am reminded of this every time I get an appeal to donate money to pay for more ads and more campaigns, and have to think about how f’d up it is that money is such a big factor in getting heard. Giving the devil his due, the current occupant of the White House got there by listening to a large voting bloc that had been feeling unheard for 50 years or so. And I believe that if Biden would go to the protest camps, listen to Black people and their 400 years of unheard grievances and the solutions that they propose, and come up with a plan based on those solutions to undo racism … then the chaos would settle down, lives would be saved, and, as an added bonus, he would be a shoo-in for the presidency. (I’ve written and told him this, and gotten no reply, not even a form letter. But then, there’s a pandemic going on…)

Even so, we got to keep raising our voices. Because we can. Because we have not been purged from the voter rolls. Because we have access to paper and ink and a roof over our heads where we can sit down and think and write. Because we have food in our pantries to sustain us, and a little money in our pockets to chip in, and mobility to get up and do something. Because civil rights are so tenuous that they are now referred to as luxury and privilege. Because otherwise we’re no better than the “good Germans.”