*I have just finished looking at what might be the final proof for the published copy of my play Controlled Damage, scheduled to be released in October 2020. Re-reading the Author’s Note made me want to share it with you a few months early. Enjoy.
One hundred and forty cities in America are burning.
Cops in Montreal are shooting tear gas and pepper spray at peaceful anti-Black racism protestors, following the murder of George Floyd.
Regis Korchinski-Paquet is dead under suspicious circumstances while in the presence of the Toronto police.
And it is 2020. Oh, we seeing clearly, now!
State sanctioned brutality of black bodies has become so normalized that you can watch it on Facebook and Twitter repeatedly. Viola Desmond was brutalized when she was dragged out of the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia on November 8, 1946. She was silenced by the legal system and those who lived outside of Nova Scotia didn’t learn about the incident until 2010, when the Nova Scotia Legislature enacted a Mercy Free Pardon for her under the watchful eye of Lieutenant Governor Mayann Francis. But, as Audre Lorde said in 1982, ‘Revolution isn’t a one-time event.’
There have always been protests against racism and police violence but this year it’s been different. White Supremacy undergirds the American government led by an authoritarian, wanna-be dictator who seeks to crush free speech and destroy the fifth estate.
It’s not enough to read the story of Viola Desmond and cluck, ‘oh that poor lady, thank goodness those times are past’ while condemning people for throwing a brick at Target. It is incumbent on those that benefit and profit from institutional and systemic racism to look inside themselves to dismantle an infrastructure that needs to keep a knee on the neck of the marginalized population to survive.
Thank you for reading my play. Now pick up a book by Desmond Cole, Ijeoma Oulo, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Cornel West, Toni Morrison. None of us are as educated as we should be on the intricate, complicated systems upholding racism. It’s not enough to say, ‘I am not racist’ and use the hashtag Black Lives Matter if you don’t actually seek to help, learn, listen, support and make space for Black and brown people in society. Racism is literally killing Black people, destroying our mental health, and shortening our lives.
Canada is a work-in-progress that must do better for the racialized and disempowered within its borders but that can only happen if we as a nation look inside ourselves to fix problems we don’t want to see. Progress cannot happen without protest so get ready to be uncomfortable.
