John,

Over the past few days, my son Alek has asked me so many questions.

"Mom, did you see the man who was killed by the police?"

"How did this happen?"

The truth, I tell him, is that we have allowed systemic racism to continue in our country.

Millions of people experience life differently because of their race. Whether we think about access to education or to health care, rates of poverty or incarceration, whether we talk about basic safety or the freedom to do everyday things like jogging or sitting in your car -- the reality is that we have allowed systemic racism to continue and that has left communities of color in peril.

We have to acknowledge this failure, and work with everything we have as a nation to finally be better than this -- so we don't just wait for the next murder. We must have zero tolerance for discrimination and profiling and for the killing of unarmed Black people.

And beyond that, we need to be willing to have the difficult conversations that for too long Republicans and Democrats have ignored, about the issues that are causing institutional racism. We have to make changes to education policy, to health care policy, to our criminal justice system.

We see this every single day -- and especially right now, as communities of color have borne the brunt of the coronavirus because they've been left behind by our health care system.

Racism isn't a single prong issue and the solution won't be either.

Now more than ever we need a leader who can bring the country together, provide direction and move us forward. Instead, we have a President who is using Twitter to break people apart and incite people towards more violence, more hatred and more division.

Given his last four years in office, this isn't surprising -- but it's unacceptable, as are his calls for violence against protesters. And it's just one more reason that we need to defeat Donald Trump in November.

The bottom line is that George Floyd should still be alive. And so should so many others.

We have to do better. And that means all of us need to commit ourselves to standing against racism and fighting for change in our flawed justice system. Standing by isn't an option.

All my best,

Sara Gideonhttps://gideon.bsd.net/unsubscribe
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