Last night I checked the curfew zones for Denton to see if we were in them. I have my kids with me this week and I needed to know where things are happening because if things get loud I want them to know why. We sat on the couch together and I talked to them about the curfew and explained the reasons behind it. The both looked at me, heartbroken that this kind of police brutality is a part of the world they live in. They will never know what it means to grow up in a system that is built to keep them out. They will never know what it is like to try and not catch a police officer’s attention as they walk down the street. They will never know what it is like to see people that look like them, have the same lived experience as them and fight the same fight every day as them be murdered by police. I am not in a position where I can be out protesting, I don’t have that platform as a part of my toolkit but I do have this.

I have had too many conversations with students about teachers that they felt treated them differently because of their ethnicity. I have had too many conversations with students about the injustice of the world and how I wish I could fix it for them but I can’t. I have had too many conversations with students sobbing in my office because of something that another person said and watched as their tears turned to righteous anger because they too realized that they could do everything possible to keep these escalations from happening and still be killed or arrested simply because of their appearance. I’ve had conversations with the police officer assigned to my campus about what he was doing to help young people of color know what to do in situations involving police, what they could say that would get that officer to go back to training mode rather than reacting out of emotion like muscle memory. I’ve been in the car when my Latinx friend was pulled over and told she couldn’t drive because she wasn’t wearing corrective lenses…the officer baited her and then made her get out of the car and I had to drive the rest of the way back to Dallas. The utter humiliation that must have caused her. I was humiliated for her. I was angry for her. I was angry that this wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last.

I see the world and my country and my town. I know that my town is full of people who are burning with anger at the injustice of the system and I know that they are fully justified in protesting as an act of solidarity and to point out the injustice that lives on in our community. That there were people protecting the Confederate memorial on the square while people wept in outrage proves the injustice lives on.

I will teach my children and my students, I will confront my peers and I will stand beside, in front of or just listen as a silent witness when I see injustice because that is my role to play in all of this.

You are seen. You are heard.