I talk and talk and talk about how beautiful it is where I live. And it is.

But the reality is everything isn’t beautiful and while I’m enjoying the people chatting on Market Street, other people are having to listen to hateful jokes told about people who look like them. Oh, right. Of course it’s lovely for me. I (mostly) “fit in.”

Yesterday made my friend even happier she’s leaving. Can I blame here? No. Do I have work to do? Yes. I will talk to this group. Will it cause them to change? Probably not, at least deep inside, but it may cause them to quiet in public. It’s at least a start. Do we need to be more open and active about rooting out such close-minded hatefulness? yes. Are they horrible people? Ignorant, certainly.

And then someone posts on FB a story, another story, about my hometown where a kid in a KKK hood harassed a young coed. Harassed… it doesn’t really talk about how horribly frightened she must have been does it. Because she at least knows her history. She doesn’t have the luxury of not knowing history, because she’s on the downside of it. Who knows what happened to her people.

At the same time, there are people in my hometown

This is on the people who look like me to confront, so that people can be safe where they are. I’ll probably get a symposium together. I hope you’ll come. I hope you’ll step up. I hope we can make a difference.

Because Peace for only some of us is no kind of Peace at all. I’m really sad today.

Here she is, starting college… and being hassled. Ok, threatened, not hassled. I’m so grateful she went to the cops. And that must have been scary. Especially if she’s new there, because who would know, if the KKK is hassling you that the cops are going to be receptive.

Folks, this one’s on us. What do we do? I wrote to the editor. I will talk to this group. I may talk to the owner. I will probably try and organize a group to teach and talk about this. But each of us need to stop these jokes… in the streets, in our families, in our friends. The racist jokes, the sexist ones, the rape jokes, the… you know them. we have to speak up each and every time. We have to step up.

So, Peace, my dears. It’s on us. And so’s Reality. It’s our community. what do we want it to look like?