nonfiction
It Starts with Us
By Brianna DeWitt
There are many things wrong with this world. It does not take hours of scanning CNN to find stories of murder, slavery, homelessness, poverty, and injustice. Stories of joy and hope are difficult, sometimes even impossible, to find on major news sources.
Pointing fingers comes easily. Murder? It is the murder’ s fault, of course. Slavery? The problem lies in the hearts of those who enslave others; and so on and so forth. We point fingers at individual people or maybe groups, ones with skewed values and a misunderstanding of what it means to value fellow human beings.
When it comes to slavery, we blame society’ s devaluing of human beings and sex. We blame hard hearts, inability to love and be loved, and those who turn a blind eye to a problem that may be directly in front of them.
Maybe the problem is not so easy to find though. Or rather, it is TOO easy to find, yet hard to recognize … and even harder to admit.
Because what if the problem is me? And you? My mother, your best friend, the barista with the friendly smile? What if we’ re the ones to blame, at least in part, for the millions of people enslaved all over the world?
The thought alone alarms me, causes me to look around the room for someone
Artwork by Ryan Hanberry
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