June 2020 --- This is a topic I have wanted to write about for a long time but not sure that I have the words. Black Lives Matter I have always known this – I was taught this. I was taught that we are all the same even when we are different. My grandfather grew up in a community in East Texas where black and white were together all the time. It was the early 1900’s and I liken it to the movie Loving and the story about parts of our country where black and white people didn’t see the color of their skin and lived in harmony. They needed each other and they were community. My mother passed this down to me from her father - people are just people. I understand now, to the best of my ability, that is not exactly right. Like everything, there are shades of gray. I may see us as the same, but others do not. I do not know what it is like to walk down the street and be afraid because of my skin color. I have felt like some black people I have met in the past didn’t like me because I am white and I just wanted to scream, but I love Martin Luther King Jr! I want to scream, I love Black People! I have black friends! Don’t judge me because I’m white. Bu - isn't that very white of me? I am learning. I want to stand beside you and with you and make that mean something. But I don’t, because I don’t want to offend them, I don’t want to hurt them and I don’t want to alienate them. I don’t know what to say. Sometimes I just don’t feel like I have words that mean anything in this fight and maybe that is right because I am not part of the oppressed. I have issues that prevent me from marching but I want to march. I feel lost and scared and just wish I could get the entire world to do a safe group hug. Hell, I was part of Hands Across America! I watched a live video feed from Washington DC that took place on Saturday 6/6/2020. A reporter was walking through crowds and filming – everything I saw was moving and peaceful. I saw black and white and brown. I saw people talking with what I assumed were National Guard (they were dressed in military fatigues). They were casual and sitting back on a car just talking. If they weren’t wearing the fatigues it would look like a bunch of friends just hanging out. But I have seen the violence too - watched it from my safe place at home. As the reporter moved on, he came to a large intersection where people were writing messages with chalk. There were so many messages. Justice for Brieanna, Justice for George …. On and on they went covering the entire intersection. That one that made me gasp, was watching a young lady writing “My skin color is not a crime”. WOW! I truly hope in my heart of hearts that the movement going on now changes things for the better. I stand with you and beside you even if I don’t know how you feel. With love, Becky     Dancers Ava Holloway and Kennedy George strike a pose on the Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond after the Virginia Governor announced the statute will be coming down. When we fight back, we win.

Black Lives Matter Some Powerful Links: - Official Black Lives Matter - Meet The 6 Teenage Girls Who Organized Peaceful Nashville Protest - Charities that are Bailing Out Protestors - Marines Ban the Use of the Confederate Flag - NFL Says it was WRONG in Not Letting Players Protest **Copied and pasted** Your black friend is trying to be ok. Your Black friend in the past 30 days has watched a Black man get shot dead while jogging (Ahmaud Arbery), a Black woman get shot dead while sleeping (Breona Taylor), and the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Your Black friend has also listened to the President of the United States use segregationist words as a veiled threat. Your Black friend is trying to be ok. Please don't ask about the looting. Please don't chastise about the rioting. Please don't say that all lives matter. Please don't minimize their fear. Please don't bring up Black on Black crime. Please don't ask "What about Chicago?" Please don't say "if you'd just act like (A Wildly Successful Black Person... Usually Oprah, Obama, Colin Powell, Denzel or Will Smith)". Please don't judge us Your Black friend is trying to be ok. Listen to your Black friend. Empathize with your Black friend. Support your Black friend. Pray for your Black friend. Pray with your Black friend. Just let your Black friend know you really care. Your Black friend will remember who truly had their back during this difficult time. They will remember who was more concerned about a looted Target. They will remember you posting a thinly veiled and racially offensive meme. They will remember you calling looters "Savages". They will remember your silence about their Black life and the Black Lives of others. It's real easy. Do whatever you can to help your Black friend out because your Black friend is trying to be ok..... **Copied and pasted**

I do have black friends and one that stands out. She is now my friend and for years she was my boss. I love her. I never brought up race around her because I didn’t think about it. I respected her for her and she taught me a lot. She looked after me and brought me up in the company. She would bring up race though, but not as a division but as not understanding. One day, she said to me, I don’t know what’s wrong with your hair because you have white hair, but I know something’s wrong! New twist on a bad hair day! There were times when she would share with me how she felt about being black and being a woman in a white male dominated company. I believed her and I knew her feelings were real but I didn’t really understand the race part. I could relate on being a female (this was the early 90’s).