I’ve been struggling to compartmentalize and stay on task. I’m not getting any writing done, or any of the other myriad projects I have at home or at work. I’m struggling.

Earlier today, I watched this short, and it helped.

I also wish I had the courage of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

This isn’t about me. I just deleted three paragraphs about how my useless rage in the face of injustice doesn’t do anyone any good. This isn’t about me.

There is a world on the other side of this, in which the racists relearn shame and are forced to slink back into the shadows. I’m not so naive as to think we’ll rid ourselves of racism entirely once Trump and Vance and all of those monsters are gone, but they won’t have room to be so bold once the slate has been cleaned.

“Brian, what are you on about race? Good and Pretti were both white. In fact, black people have been suffering at the hands of police for generations and–“

I am just as upset when the victims are non-white. Good and Pretti only stand out to me now because of the videos and the lies of Noem and Miller and others. I still believe in the message of Black Lives Matter, so don’t get distracted.

Racism is what drives ICE. It’s what fuels Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem and Donald Fucking Trump. The whole immigration push, in which brown people are being seized by masked agents and disappeared, is all borne from racism.

Many things can be true at the same time, and it seems that the evil of a regime can be multifaceted, too. It’s a class war as well as an act of white nationalism. It’s a huge, long-con grift as well as a desperate attempt to hold power from an ever-shrinking minority.

We are currently in a world I do not want to live in, that I feel powerless to fight, but there will be another world on the other side of it, if we can survive long enough to see it. If we’re going to make it to that world, we will have to summon the kind of courage Pretti and Good demonstrated, the kind of courage to face the oppressors and stand without fighting.

Alex Pretti had a gun on him, it’s true, but he didn’t reach for it when things were going down. His final act was to reach down, to help a bullied woman with one hand while filming everything happening with the other. His last words were to that woman: “Are you alright?”

And other people keep asking me, “Are you alright?”

The answer is no, not yet. But if justice is done, I will be.