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Thank You, Peaceful Protesters!

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Protest! No Justice No Peace. Sunday May 31st. Location: Stop & Shop.

That was the message I received in my email Saturday. So Sunday I set out on a two mile walk to join the protest. And as I did so my mind took me on another trip entirely.

First stop 2009. I am sitting in front of my T.V. holding back tears and thinking about how far our country has come while watching Barak Obama take the oath to become President. Next stop last Monday when George Floyd is murdered by white police officers and Amy Cooper, a white woman in New York’s Central Park, tried to get a peaceful birdwatcher guilty of being black arrested for threatening her life.

Clearly racists and xenophobes and other bad actors have been emboldened by the current administration. Hence our job is to stand up against them and a President who they see as supporting their views and behavior.

So with that in mind let’s add a THANK YOU PEACEFULL PROTESTORS! message to the THANK YOU HEALTHCARE WORKERS! THANK YOU FIRST RESPONDERS! And THANK YOU ESSENTIAL WORKERS! signs we pass on our walks in these stressful times.

THANK YOU PEACEFULL PROTESTORS for your courage and willingness to take on the fight against viruses more dangerous than the coronavirus and relegate the racist, misogynist, xenophobic demagogue and his supporters that are spreading them to the history books. As Edmund Burke put it in 1770: When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

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