2017 Life Logs, Day 274: Racial Justice for All
Date: Sunday, October 1, 2017
Weather: Cool and Partly Sunny; High 60, Low 47 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio, Falmouth, MA
A local coalition of grassroots organizations, including No Place for Hate, Engage Falmouth, and the Falmouth Racial Justice League held a Racial Justice rally on the Falmouth Village Green late this afternoon. The Falmouth gathering was organized to shed light on the economic, racial, environmental, gender, and religious inequalities. I met up with friends Olivia and Terry White, and to my surprise, Sam and Jonah were there with neighbors. Heather and Jed were home fixing dinner for the whole crew while Jeanne Harper and Dan Hennen brought Sam, Jonah, and their sons Cole and Leo to the rally.
Representatives of different ethnic minority groups spoke about situations here on the Cape where they have been discriminated against. Yes, even here in liberal, forward-thinking Massachusetts, we have our fair share of people who still cannot accept people different from themselves. Evidently the representatives of the different groups are finding that the incidences of racial discrimination have increased since January of this year. No surprise there. I was especially touched by a young Woods Hole scientist from Puerto Rico. He was not speaking of local discrimination, but of a federal government that seems to display injustice in the way it responds to catastrophes in different locations depending on the make-up of the population.
His family lives on the south coast of Puerto Rico and his elderly grandmother has received only 7 bottles of water in the 11 days since the Hurricane Maria. This is something we might expect to happen in Bangladesh, not in a US territory that is only 1,000 miles away from Miami. The stories were hard to listen to, but they were good for us to hear.
I spent the rest of my day organizing the things I need to do starting tomorrow morning for Justin’s business—lots of contacts and inquiries to make. I also ordered more things to send to Puerto Rico. I was encouraged when I checked US Postal Service tracking this afternoon. It shows that the packages I have already sent have left New Jersey headed to San Juan. The tracking is showing that the packages will arrive in Rincon by 8 pm tomorrow night. There was a Red Alert message on the site listing the post offices in Puerto Rico that should be open for package pick-up this week and Rincon is one of them. Very good news. I don’t know how they are doing it, but it looks like even the greatest disaster has a hard time stopping the US mail. We’ll soon know if that is true.
