How to be an #ally
When I moved to LA, from Sweden, pretty bright eyed and bushy tailed, I knew very little about the systematized racism that the American culture is woven from. My first boy-friend was a beautiful soul, a poet, who stole my heart and gave me the most colorful experience of my new found life on a new continent. He was of African American and Puerto Rican blood, and our relationship took us on a journey where I immediately was thrown into my education of race, black and white, and inequality. There are many stories, but the one I remember the most is that we were stopped by LAPD several times while driving, at which point they would ask me: “are you ok, mam?”. I was naively unfounded and asked my boyfriend why they would ask me such a thing.
My experience in my own country, Sweden, where I was of different descent than the pure Swedes, was also punctuated by anti immigrant sentiments against my family, and general xenophobia. Many of my people, and immigrants from other places had to live in low income areas, and my parents would experience more negative push back than I did. Growing up, I had absolutely not been blind to some of the inequalities that were foundational, and which still exist, but I was young when I moved and what I learned about hate and non acceptance, I did in America.
Throughout the years, this society’s act of blatantly ignoring the fact that there is even a problem (as if there is a question of that!), made me so tired that I honestly started checking out. I am ashamed to say it. I would personally try to fight the small fights, treat human beings as I would want to be treated. Help where I can, and support a cause for freedom for all people. But when a problem like this is systematically woven into the society we live in, unfortunately, it becomes silently deadly, and creeps up on us in our everyday lives. It is everywhere we are. It is in everything we do. And It will require for us to wake up and start paying attention and taking responsibility for the world we live in.
I am learning through this process myself. I’m talking with, asking, reading, walking, protesting, but most of all, educating myself, because the journey of making a change doesn’t just require a walk to protest, it requires and reinvention of how to be in this world as a human, wanting to be a more educated one. I know it’s utopian, maybe even childish to lead with love and want to love, because action is what is needed! I want to share a few things that I am doing to continue learning and gaining a more educated foundation from which I can take action. I believe we can make things better together!
Treat all people with the respect, with which you would like to be treated.
Explore how you can help. There are tons of resources where you can find great information.
Explore how you become an #ally.
Take action!
I’m happy to have my website on a platform that Takes Action!
This message is one that we ALL have to own and put forth. This is the time to rise for humanity. We have a life time opportunity to actually make a change. Let’s all stand up together!!
Live Loud!