I Don't Want to Leave This Town

I currently live in Oakland, California--at the end of Piedmont and by the northern edges of downtown. I have a creek nearby my home, a park, where I walk and jog around occasionally and trained at for the 2014 Nike Women's Marathon. I ate Thanksgiving dinner this year in my current home's dining room, at a table from my roommate, beside a kitchen that is apart of a three-bedroom shared rooming situation in an old 100-year old+ house on Westall Avenue in Oakland, California.

Currently, change is not something I am thinking about. That is, I am not about to change. Me. I do want to create change, and I want to look for change in my environment, to appreciate changes in other, and to observe change in the world.

I have been working on a lot of internal, psychological states of mind. I have been noticing and observing my thoughts and thought patterns. I have actively worked on my anxiety and depression. I have prevailed, I have won mental battles; I have lost some, too. But you know what? That's just fine with me. I will keep going. I will live on. Success? Perhaps I'll make it, but maybe I won't.

These days, I read about police officers murdering and "accidently" killing perpetrators who have committed either no crime, or a small crime. Is it fair? Is it fair to discriminate between people, to choose to apprehend someone of color based on face value? Is it fair to kill for the betterment of society? Is that even true?

It's funny, in a disappointing kind of way. To see, not just one, but two, three, four, tens, dozens, hundreds of innocent lives that have been taken away by "mistakes", and without a clear, viable solution in motion.

In my opinion, I am not a firm believer in bringing justice by punishing another for a "mistake", and for the rest of that person's life. Is it worth it? Death for another "death"? I'm not so sure.

What I am interested in, actually, is the voice of the public--a voice that is vibrant, strong, and free. Taking its right to free of speech, and democratic participation. These deaths have been a systemic issue, a problem with our current system of policing and protecting, that so many lives have been lost, lives that could have been saved instead.