Time To Make A Change

25 May 2020.

Lockdown continues.

Dominic Cummins has just 'broken the rules,' and there are rumours of essential shops re-opening.

Over in Minneapolis there's a different story.

George Floyd has just been murdered by the police. A name which is set for the history books as a symbol of police brutality and racism. A reason for national and global protest and a catalyst for change.

I never thought I would live through times like these. Times where a black man gets murdered for carrying a counterfeit note, times where people felt so moved and outraged that they took to the streets in thousands amidst a global pandemic, times where mass protests take one day to organise through the power of social media.

George Floyd's death, and the ensued growth of the BLM movement inspired me to write the piece below. It's an exploration of systematic racism and white privilege.

London protests 28 May 2020.

Colonisation. Segregation. Incarceration.

Condemnation with no justification.

But why?

Systematic racism.

A system that labels you guilty by the colour of your skin

Hundreds of years without real freedom, and where did it begin

Stripped of your land, pillaged for its men

To help countries like America ‘become great again.’

Please I can’t breathe.

The cries of another desperate soul and yet we still struggle to believe.

None of this is new we just finally have eyes to see,

Through technology the truth is out on how barbaric the system can be.

A system one can’t escape, a predetermined hate.

And yet I sat back with my privileged white fate.

But now is the time to act, to finally make a change.

Turn the page on this easy life we don’t realise we have gained.

Educate and eradicate.

Spread the love and stop the hate

Equalities a necessity

Apathy, a leprosy

Ignorance is never bliss when you have the eyes to see.

Silence is compliance.

A rebellion has begun.

May inequality and racism finally be done.