After the video of the murder of George Floyd started to dominate the news cycle, it took several days for me to force myself to watch it. All nine-minutes of it. The anguish that swelled within me was so overpowering that it felt as if it was going to burn away pieces of my soul. A couple of days later I found myself in jail after being arrested while participating in a protest demonstration near Trump Tower.
By now, the numbers are numbing. Months into the coronavirus pandemic, more than 100,000 people in the United States are dead and 1.55 million have tested positive.
Behind those numbers are names and individual people. They are mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends, grandparents and grandchildren, and even a days-old baby in Chicago.
