Work together against racism

The Spokesman-Review recently featured two front-page articles about racism. One reported how an African-American, Lawrence Goncalves, endured racial abuse from 1972 to 1988, while serving as a Spokane firefighter.

Much racism today has been institutionalized and legalized. While people of color suffer its dehumanizing effects, racism is sustained by whites. Sometimes wittingly, but often unwittingly, we whites perpetuate racism. Dr. Martin Luther King expressed grave disappointment with moderate whites who tolerated injustice. He reminded us that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

We can become a just and equitable society, but only when moderate whites unite with the oppressed. Such collaboration is happening today, through the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.

Systemic racism explained my presence in Olympia on May 21. Citizens gathered in state capitals across the country that day, to hear impacted people, and to protest racial practices that diminish our nation. Nineteen of us undertook nonviolent civil disobedience to stress the critical need to reform our society. Arrested for trespassing, I symbolically suffered on behalf of Americans who continue to suffer racism degradation, like Mr. Goncalves. Let us work together to achieve the ideal upon which America was founded.

The Rev. Rick Matters

Spokane