I mean, I could write more, [and I will, it is my way to process] but really that’s it. That’s the thing I want you to learn this week.

Black Lives Matter.

I had other things to write about today, but again it seems insignificant. Like professional athletes across the country from Antekokounmpo to Zusi, sports are just a game, this is about life. It’s about serious things that at 2 years old and 9 months old you may not fathom. But you should.

Earlier this week, Jacob Blake was returning to his car. He was looking at his sons in the backseat. Boys not much older than you. He saw them, and he was shot seven times in the back. Jacob Blake’s life matters.

Blake has survived, he’ll see with his boys again, but I don’t know if I’ll ever buckle you in again without feeling the privilege that comes with just being white. Or without recognizing the privilege you have in being white. The trauma those boys witnessed chills my blood. Black fathers’ and sons’ lives matter.

Two nights ago, officers surrounded a man in downtown Minneapolis. A few miles from us. A few blocks from where I used to work. Right outside a Dairy Queen I would take the cross-country team too after races. The man was a suspect in a homicide, and rather than face arrest, he shot himself.

He did so next to five teens. Teens like my students who would congregate in the same spot. Teens like the ones who love every post I share of you two. Teens who were laughing, flirting, checking their reflection in the shiny marble. Teens who now have that trauma over their heads every day. Their lives matter.

We say that black lives matter not, as some pretend, because we think other lives don’t (looking at you fascist Vozdovac supporters). Not because we are being trendy or “woke”. We say it because it is true, and it bears repeating.

We repeat today when victims of violence suffer.

We repeat it tomorrow when the news-cycle moves on.

We repeat it in a month when the mourning stretches on for the community while others wonder why they’re so emotional.

We repeat it in a year when the bystanders confront their trauma without supports that taxpayers decline to fund.

We repeat it in a decade when those involved and those associated and everyone who has seen and feared and worried about injustice have faced it again and again and again while an ignorant and ambivalent country glides by.

Black Lives Matter.