Speak Up - Black Lives Matter
76 protestors were arrested as of Thursday and the leadership of this country made threats to shoot its citizens. This is deeper than #GeorgeFloyd. It’s every black man&woman who has lived in fear of the same thing happening to them. It is every black man&woman who has had the same thing happen. It is every black man&woman who has been assumed that should happen to them. You do not live with this same fear as a white person in the US. What you do live w/ is the responsibility to be a voice for the person who lives w/ that constant fear. This keeps happening because too many have chosen to be quiet bc it is uncomfortable to talk about race. Acknowledging that you have been given opportunity over someone of color simply bc you are white is a hard thing to face. It’s hard to know when to speak up. As a business, you might fear loosing customers if you choose to be vocal. That is ugly corporatism rearing it’s head. #AhmaudArbery was jogging. He was doing what all of us do. Exercising. Bettering himself. He was hunted down and shot. This pandemic has shown how sinister our current leadership is. We might think we want to keep politics out of brands but creating a brand is political. The small business wave that was happening when I started Moop was artists looking for ways to create livelihoods from their work. It was undermining a capitalism that made it impossible for you to support yourself as a full time artist. It created a way to do so. It wasn’t beholden to other people’s money who say brands should be neutral. I started this from that legacy. It has never been hard to know my politic. This is not about repubs or dems. This is about human rights. Deserved equally. And it requires every single one of us to defend them. We can collectively build new systems that support citizens of color equally and chooses not to support organizations and policies that carefully conceal racist ideologies into public discourse. We will work harder to ensure we are doing our part here at Moop, as a business and as humans. We are angry and hurt right now. I hope we can use this fuel to make deep underground systematic change all around. The government won’t do it. The people will.
