Omid Safi: We Have To Become an America Where This Violence Has No Place

This clearly illuminates the truth of a larger picture and why it is that I’m not comfortable saying, “Is this what we have become?” So important for us all to be conscious of. As we embrace the truth of the shadow side within ourselves, our culture, and the world, individual and collective healing, awakening, and evolution becomes possible. — Molly

Photo: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters from today, and tear gas use on Bloody Sunday at Edmund Pettus Bridge.

 This Is Not Who We Have Become

So many of us are looking at horror at the pictures of U.S. Border Patrol hurling tear gas at a Hispanic mother and her two children at the Border, and wondering: "Is this who we have become?"

No, my friends. 
This is not who we have become. 
This is part of who and what we have always been.

Ask the Native Americans. Ask the enslaved West Africans. Ask the Mexicans. Ask African-Americans. Ask Muslims in Guantanamo. This sanctioned use of state violence against human beings is and has always been a part of the white supremacy inherent in the American Empire.

And yet...
It is not *all* of what we have been. It is not the best of what we have been. But it is a part of who we have been.

If we want it to not be a part of America, we have to become an America where this violence has no place.

We have not been that America. 
We have to become that America.

— Omid Safi