It’s Not Over. Not Even Close.

Breonna Taylor’s murderers have not been charged. The accessories to that murder are still employed.

The man who fractured Martin Gugino’s skull is out on bail, along with the only other officer of dozens who witnessed the assault and did nothing.

We still have an avowed and publicly declared fascist controlling the executive branch, and scores of not-so-publicly declared fascists in Congress, to say nothing of a judiciary that has been filled with rot.

22 states still have no legal age requirement for marriage, with parental consent – “parental consent” being a mechanism used for thousands of years to legitimize pedophilia.

8 states still forbid atheists from holding office.

There are still uncountable millions without health insurance – 44 million *before* COVID, and untold millions more since. Health care is still treated as a benefit of employment rather than a human right.

Profit interests still hold power – in some cases nearly absolute power – in our prisons and criminal justice system, our schools, our hospitals, and our elections.

Women still aren’t paid the same as men.

Thousands of police with records of violence, including both domestic violence and illegal assaults of captives, continue to be employed.

Nothing, still, has been done to help the over half a million homeless people, including about 18 thousand unaccompanied, unsheltered minors, in this country – again, pre-covid numbers.

Nothing, still, has been done to help the 38 million Americans living in poverty – pre-covid.

Legal abortions are still nearly impossible to obtain in vast stretches of our nation.

Most states still do not have laws requiring mandatory termination of parental rights in cases of rape.

Hundreds of police officers have walked off their jobs in recent weeks in protest against demands for accountability and transparency related to abuse of police power.

Thousands of pathetic, cowardly, entitled, overgrown infants continue to terrorize the streets of this nation with terrorist displays of deadly force and threat of violence against any and all who threaten the totalitarian oligarchy these supplicant bootlickers think is going to benefit them as long as they’ve got enough guns and MAGA hats.

Oh, and in case we’re not noticing, COVID-19’s “second wave” is happening before the first one was over because these same sniveling lickspittles can’t stop kissing their own asses long enough to grasp what “deadly pandemic” means.  It probably doesn’t help that, under the guise of “freedom of speech,” much of the media and even the “president” himself continue to insist it’s not a thing, because if it was they’d lose money.

The struggle, as they say, is not merely “not over.” It’s barely begun. It’s not going to be easy. Some of us may lose our lives in this struggle, as some of us already have, to say nothing of grievous and permanently disabling injuries at the hands of militarized police and white fascist bigots who have, in at least some cases, been coddled by police rather than properly arrested and charged.

Some of us will become estranged (or further estranged) from family. Some of us will end marriages. Some of us will lose our livelihoods for speaking out. I personally have been targeted by fake “Antifa” trolls (and they ARE fake, at least one of them is well known to me and has been stalking me for decades) who outed my home address, putting nine other innocent people in danger of violence at the hands of bigots and fascists who might not like what I have to say.

None of us wants to go through that, and yet…we must. We must because decency and compassion demand it. We must because the very concepts of human freedom and dignity are at stake. We must because until the oligarchy that controls most of the planet is crushed into a bad memory, we are all a moment’s notice away from returning to the darkest of all imaginable dark ages, a world in which all the evils of the past combine with the technology of the future to create a dystopian hellscape that Orwell couldn’t have imagined in his worst nightmares.

“It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?”

We MUST keep fighting.  MUST.  It’s been a minute since anyone in this country had to truly and seriously consider whether they’re willing to risk their lives to uphold and advance the cause of human decency, compassion, and dignity; to wonder if they might just end up being a martyr for the causes of justice, equality, prosperity, and peace.

That time is now.  That place is now.  We who cherish genuine freedom and who seek genuine progress are looking directly into the eye of our moment in history.  One hundred years from now, either this moment will be taught as the moment when we finally decided to start living up to our own hype…or it won’t be taught at all.