“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” Elie Wiesel
It is with a deep sadness and frustration that I write this note.
Yesterday driving home from a busy day at work my son and I learned about the Ferguson Verdict on the radio. Rage and disbelief immediately stroke straight to my mind and heart… I tighten angrily my grip on the steering wheel while I relived the audio of police officer Darren Wilson shooting unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown in close range. It took the voice of my 8-year-old son saying “mommy” to bring me back from the dark moment.
But why did this happen? And how did it happen? These questions haunt me and I feel we’ll never get real answers.
Injustice has a powerful way to kill your spirit, to scar your soul, to freeze your faith and to destroy hope… but it also ignites revolution, to wake us up and to make us scream NO MORE!
We have to send a strong message. This shouldn’t have happened and THIS CAN’T HAPPEN AGAIN. There has to be another way to confront unarmed children that doesn’t end in their death. Our law enforcement has to be trained differently to react when a difficult challenge like this arises. Life is so precious and we need to find a way to protect it.
I can only help uniting my voice to everybody else’s. We need to scream together INJUSTICE. We need to protest this verdict and call everyone to do the same. Our voices need to be heard in Ferguson! INJUSTICE NO MORE! We are miles away; hence let’s scream louder! Our community here in Portland, OR needs to be heard. INJUSTICE NO MORE!
Thanksgiving is around the corner, most of us will gather around our loved ones and we’ll get to say what we’re thankful for. But the Brown family will have an empty chair this year. Let’s all say a prayer in their honor, but more importantly let’s start a difficult conversation about privilege, injustice, power, and race. Let’s come up with different ways to implement force. There has to be another way. I know that I won’t be able to just seat and eat pretending like this didn’t happen and that it doesn’t affect us a nation.
It’s our mission to start change. Speak up and let your voice be heard. If we don’t talk this will happen again. And this time we’ll be the guilty ones and we’ll be the ones pulling the trigger.
Written by Victoria Lara
Lara Media Services CEO