I would like to thank you, Sabrina Jennings, for your powerful and much-needed open letter to the people — all the people — of Warwick.
And I love it that you set out to make me — and others like me — feel uncomfortable.
Mission definitely accomplished!
Your letter was a wake-up call that racism — overt and hateful, but also passive and hateful — exists right here in Warwick, this town we both love.
So now ... what? What comes after the discomfort and the waking-up?
That’s the question.
I don’t know the answer, but I know it has to be something more than talk, more than letters to the editor.
As a community and as a first step, we have to find ways to come together and have “those uncomfortable conversations” you talk about, and those conversations have to be structured so that they lead to actions and change — in classrooms and athletic fields, in houses of worship, in community service organizations, on Main Street, in the Police Department and probably other places as well.
As a coping mechanism, you told herself “it is what it is.”
We, comfortable, complacent Warwick, can’t do that any more. We can’t look the other way. We have to use the calls to action on the national level from the George Floyd tragedy (and the long string of tragedies that preceded it ... and the ones that came after as well) and the call to action in your’ message to to find out what needs to change ... and then change.
I look forward to the day when we will all march together.
Geoff Howard
Warwick