I’m OK.
A good deal of folks took the time to check in on my family and me. Big Mad HUGS to you all for doing that. We’re good. My son’s taking the quarantine and the worldwide protesting in stride. He’s got the typical questions of a Black American twelve-year-old:
What exactly is in tear gas? What happens when a rubber bullet hits your face? What’s wrong with being brown?Could what happen to George Floyd happen to you dad?
My newly adult aged daughter wants to go to the local protests and “BURN THIS BITCH DOWN.” My giant dog just wants everyone to return to school, work, wherever we use to go, so she can get a good nap in.
We’re OK.
And I hope you all are safe and sound. My big wow moment happened when I saw the images of all the international crowds protesting for Floyd, for BLM. Get in where you fit. Many hands and all that, it’s true!
I’m not the preach at kind. So I’ll just leave you with a few things.
My favorite Fredrick Douglas quote in context:
“This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.”
And my man, Jesus, just wrecking shop.
And I said yes, what happened to Floyd can happen to me.
But I hope, we, Americans will change that quickly.
“Mad Jay” Brown is a polyhedral dice pool. He has written The Clockwinders for Fate RPG, PRIME Supers for Cortex Prime RPG, and By Acer’s Light for Burning Wheel and Dungeon World RPGs. He is the host of the Diceology, a podcast about gamers and a GM-for-hire currently running 40+ player West Marches RPG at Into The Mad Lands. He likes games and stories about outsiders and underdogs. Jay games with his kids and loves his momma but she doesn’t game…yet.
